RethinkDB VS CouchDB

I've been poking around, testing and breaking database servers for a long time (more than 20 years today). But a few years ago I came across a jewel, the grail, one of the best solutions available. Under the radar, shunned for whatever reason, RethinkDB is nonetheless one of the finest database server projects I've ever tested.

RethinkDB[0] looks like a "too good to be true" type of database. Anyone using it in production? What is your experience like? What are the pros and cons?

[0] https://rethinkdb.com

Since you’re not new to the field you might want to peek https://rethinkdb.com/ since it got picked up as an open source project.

No I don't think that's relevant. They implement their own btree it seems [0].

They don't use a key-value store library.

I know it's a bit of a fine line. But I'm talking about standalone libraries people embed across different applications/databases. That's what RocksDB/LevelDB/Pebble are.

[0] https://github.com/rethinkdb/rethinkdb/tree/v2.4.x/src/btree

A Data Objects represents data which can be saved inside a database. This concept is in the heart of SQLAlchemy, but as the name should be obvious: it's for SQL Database (in general). Today, there are now document databases too (like MongoDB, ArangoDB, RethinkDB that I love so much, or even PostgreSQL). So, a "data" is like a "structured and typed document" that you save "as is". That's not the same paradigm, not the same controls. There are advantages and disadvantages, but we won't debate that here.

There are multiple ways to share data between two (or more) instances of your app: - you can use a shared storage, such as Cloud Firestore, - you can build your own backend (based on a real-time database, such as RethinkDB), - or you can rely on local communication using the Multipeer framework you linked.

CouchDB

CouchDB is a json based database for simple projects. The fork pouchdb offers lots of support for offline.

Apache CouchDB belongs to the family of NoSQL databases. It is a document store with a strong focus on replication and reliability. One of the most significant differences between CouchDB and a relational database (besides the absence of tables and schemas) is how you query data. Relational databases allow their users to execute arbitrary and dynamic queries via SQL. Each SQL query may look completely different than the previous one. These dynamic aspects are significant for use cases where you work exploratively with your dataset but don't matter as much in a web context. Additionally, defining an index for a specific table is optional. Most developers will define indices to boost performance, but the database does not require it.

I just turns out you can't always do that in a real codebase. For example see here:

  https://github.com/apache/couchdb/blob/23efd8e5b1aa96ef01640fec03a5fedc945ba8b9/src/couch_mrview/src/couch_mrview_http.erl#L228

Example: Apache Cassandra, CouchDB.

For non-SQL-based databases, consider MongoDB, or CouchDB, which are very easy to get started with.

The Apache CouchDB server. It stores Annotation data.

CouchDB