We had the opportunity to attend the Couchbase user conference in San Jose back in June. The event had record attendance and was held in an usual setting, the 49ers new Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. Despite being a stadium, the event was well accommodated very well in the facility, which caters well to similar events of the size. 

 

So here are my Top 3 takeaways of the event:

N1QL – Couchbase unveiled N1QL, an extension to the SQL query language. Usually I am concerned about new programming languages / syntax, as my general position is that ‘the world does not need another programming language’. But as I learnt at the conference, N1QL is different as it is only an extension to SQL and it passes my general hurdle for creating a new programming language (or new commands in this case) – it makes developers more productive.

Traversing document structures before the addition of N1QL was cumbersome and error prone. Now with the addition of commands like NEXT, UNNEST, WITHIN and more, it is easier for developers to work with information inside of documents.

Finally a smart move by Couchbase to partner with UC San Diego, there the Database Group, which gives the whole extension more credibility and gravitas (more here). And it is good that the Couchbase remains open for more academic institutions and other standard bodies to join. 
Couchbase CEO Wiederhold opens Couchbase Connect
Couchbase CEO Wiederhold opens Couchbase Connect
Customer Momentum – As Couchbase sees more developer uptake – it also sees more customers going live. I had the chance to speak to travel start up Roomlia and well established data vendor Nielsen. Both catered to unique strong points of Couchbase in terms of ease of use, productivity to build applications and cater for simplification of complex structures for relational databases in the form of XML, document formats. Informally I spoke to close a dozen other attendees, and all echoed similar advantages – performances in design, development and operation as well as enablement of new applications that were not able to be built before, with other database technologies.
Couchbase Connect Presenter
Presenters in costumes!
Performance Wars – In the same week we learned about performance statements from NoSQL vendors – not surprisingly both claiming leadership. It would be good to change the conversation away from the pure performance wars and look at architecture and resulting benefits. In this area Couchbase has done some good work, separating server loads in the previous release of Couchbase and now pushing performance critical processes into the query / storage layer. All good moves to make sure a database keeps performing well and scaling well. Let’s leave it there.
 

MyPOV

A very good event for Couchbase, which showed that it is getting more and more traction in the heart of Silicon Valley. It keeps innovating and expanding the use cases, developer productivity of Couchbase, while doing all the key housekeeping activities that may not be flashy at first sight, but pay off in the longer run. Intuitively developers and customer know that, and the strategy will help Couchbase going forward.

On the concern side, Couchbase has the good problem to have to a manage growth, in product, sales go to market on a global scale. Competition for developers and talent is global, and Couchbase is competing needs to keep competing on a global level for both customers and developers.

But overall good progress and traction for Couchbase. We will be analyzing, stay tuned.
 
A few good tweets: 
 
 

Business Research Themes

Tech Optimization

Tags

couchbase, developers, nextgen apps, nextgenapps, nosql