News

Couchbase Mobile Targets Enterprise

• By David Ramel
• February 4, 2016

Today's release of Couchbase Mobile -- the NoSQL database turned into a mobile dev solution -- targets the enterprise with administration, security and performance enhancements.

Couchbase Mobile 1.2 consists of three components: an embedded Couchbase Lite database living on the device; the cloud-based Sync Gateway that synchronizes data between devices and the cloud back-end; and Couchbase Server, an enterprise-grade NoSQL database residing on that back-end, providing elastic scaling and high performance.

The solution is but one of several cutting-edge attempts to provide "always available" mobile apps that work equally well offline, providing functionality even when no network connection is available.

"The idea behind Couchbase Mobile was to make it easy for developers to build apps that work both online and offline, but also to manage data transfer more efficiently between the device and the cloud," exec Wayne Carter told ADT Mag in an interview last summer. "By doing all of this, they produce applications that have a really great experience compared to traditional development or REST-based approaches."

The NoSQL database, which went mobile in May 2014 and was upgraded in version 1.1 just over a year later, has in its latest version addressed the No. 1 concern for enterprise use: security.

"The proliferation of mobile usage has created a need for technology providers and enterprises to rapidly invest and innovate in security," the company said in a statement. "There are five primary security concerns surrounding mobile data synchronization and decentralized storage of data on a mobile device: user authentication, data read/write access, data transport on the wire, data storage on device and data storage in the cloud. Couchbase Mobile has always addressed each of these areas and with this new release, Couchbase has further increased security on the device by encrypting data at rest on the device using enterprise-level 256-bit AES full database encryption."

Administration, meanwhile, was improved with new install capabilities that ease in-place upgrades, the company said, so enterprises can better administer large deployments.

Addressing performance, the company with this release has introduced a new storage engine, ForestDB, in the Couchbase Lite component. The company claimed Couchbase Lite 1.2 delivers up to 5x performance gains over tthe previous release for key database tasks such as inserts, updates, deletes, queries and indexing. It also touted new memory management optimizations to boost the performance of nodes under ultra-high loads.

"Increasing competitive pressure requires organizations to quickly deliver engaging and data-rich mobile and Web apps," said exec Ravi Mayuram. "But, enterprises and developers building mobile applications struggle because there are so few out-of-the-box solutions for mobile application infrastructure. Our new release of Couchbase Mobile delivers out-of-the-box synchronization, security, administration and performance features that will help enterprises quickly deliver mobile applications that make them more competitive in the Digital Economy."