Question

Recently I was reviewing Couchbase as a NoSQL document database. It looks amazing the way it handles fail overs and how you can easily add a new DB server. I found out the way you can define the views is like CouchDB. So I thought Couchbase is using the same mechanism for its persistence layer as CouchDB.

When I looked at their website some days ago in the features section they’ve mentioned the following statement:

Couchbase uses SQLite, which is proven, reliable and widely deployed, as its persistence layer.

As long as I know SQLite is a fantastic database for phone or small databases but it’s not designed for hundreds of millions of records and it’s not scalable. Today when I checked their website again I found out that there is no sign of SQLite in their features page anymore.

So my question is, what does exactly Couchbase uses as it’s persistence layer. Is it SQLite? If not, does it use the same mechanism as CouchDB or it’s a totally different approach?

Here is the link to the cached version of features page where it stated Couchbase uses SQLite as its persistence layer and here is the new features page.

Answer 1

Couchbase < 2.0 uses SQLite. They simply renamed Membase when the companies merged.

The new CouchBase 2.0 uses CouchDB instead of SQLite.

Well, sort of: http://www.couchbase.com/couchbase-vs-couchdb

The team leveraged certain aspects of Apache CouchDB code to replace
the Membase storage backend and add indexing and querying. Substantial
portions were rewritten, however, to provide the performance and
resource utilization that the team felt was required. The result is
that while Couchbase is heavily influenced by Apache CouchDB, it is
meaningfully different.