CouchDB: A Database for the Web

https://gist.github.com/ssp/5666143

By:

Sven-S. Porst

Description:

This bootcamp is an introduction to CouchDB  and the technologies (HTTP, JSON, Map/Reduce) related to it. Participants will then build their own database and use its data into a web page.  CouchDB is a schemaless »NoSQL« database, which can store arbitrary fielded documents – formatted as JSON  objects familiar to JavaScript programmers. It does not require a fixed schema definition, thus allowing for a lot of flexibility in settings with a huge number of varying fields like bibliographic records.

Designed as a database for and on the web, CouchDB is controlled and queried using the familiar HTTP protocol. This makes it natural and easy to integrate CouchDB in web pages. Indexes are defined by writing simple JavaScript functions which are then used in a Map/Reduce algorithm.

Depending on the interests of the participants and the time available, we can also look into other interesting features of CouchDB such as its changes feed for tracking modifications, its ability to replicate between instances or using Lucene to create a full text index of the documents in CouchDB.

Audience:

People working with data on the web.

Expertise:

Basic knowledge about http and JavaScript.

Programming experience:

Basic familiarity with JavaScript.