Minihosting is here!

Plus, some of our most popular articles ever, more reasons why we love CouchDB and some exciting events. Keep reading to make sure you don’t miss the latest news — or the Architecture Review special we’re running at the moment.

Apache CouchDB™ News

We asked, you answered! It’s been a while since we shared a user survey for the CouchDB project (the last time was in 2017) so we wanted to learn how people are using CouchDB since the 3.4.2 release. We couldn’t resist sharing some of the insights!

Only a third of users are on 3.4.2, and a couple of you are still on 1.x.x!

From risking downtime to the learning curve, we know upgrading can be a drag. But CouchDB 3.4.2 has worthy advantages — and some flagship features. We wrote some tips on upgrading and an in-depth guide to Nouveau for full-text search to make the jump smoother.

📦 Need more help upgrading? We want you to get the most out of the technology we love. If upgrading is a hurdle for your team or your budget, reach out to us so we can find a solution.

Feature requests: queries, enhanced replication and advanced search

A database is no good if you can’t learn from your data easily, and ways to do this dominated this round’s requested features. It’s one of the reasons Nouveau was much awaited (another reason to upgrade!), and it’s also why we developed Structured Query Server for SQL queries in CouchDB last year. If query capabilities and advanced search are what your project needs, they’re already here!

We’ll be publishing the whole survey result set on the CouchDB Blog soon.

Neighbourhoodie Updates

🆕 Introducing CouchDB Minihosting

Forget CouchTo5k, we can do ToCouchIn5Min! But seriously, we made it possible to stand up your own internet-serving CouchDB instance, complete with auto-renewing TLS and optional deployments for an offline-first web-app. Now you can give building apps with CouchDB a spin in under five minutes: another thing that makes CouchDB excellent for prototypes.

We Have an RSS Feed!

If you, like many on our team, could weep at what ads, algorithms and fragmentation have done to the online reading experience, you’ll love this update: our blog now has an RSS feed! To be fair we don’t serve ads or cookies, but regardless, now you can enjoy our latest articles where you’d like to find them.

A Real-Time Multi-User Kanban Board with CouchDB and Svelte

This has been one of our most popular published tutorials. We’re pretty sure we know why: Going down the wrong path, backtracking, and considering alternatives are a typical part of development, but aren’t always reflected in how-tos. If you would like to learn how to think CouchDB (and exceed do CouchDB) start with part 1 of 4 on our blog.

How CouchDB Prevents Data Corruption

If there’s one thing to know about CouchDB, it’s that it takes your data’s safety very seriously. That occasionally translates into some thrilling moments for maintainers. Breathe the sigh of relief with us as we confirm that CouchDB even handles the most out-there edge cases by using fsync strategivally to prevent data corruption.

📖 For more great articles from our team, visit the Neighbourhoodie Blog.

PouchDB + Local First Conf. — Berlin, May 28–29

PouchDB’s next trip will be to Local First Conf in Berlin in May — will we see you there?

Some of our team will be attending the conference and bringing PouchDB and CouchDB with us. We want to raise awareness about these technologies and grow their shared community.

Would you like to help? We’re gathering testimonials for the PouchDB website. If PouchDB has helped your team or project, consider replying to this email with a couple of lines about why you love it and who your team is (with their permission, of course). Join us in the CouchDB Slack and #pouchdb channel to help others and further the conversation.

Oh, and PouchDB is on its way to apply to join the Apache Foundation!

FOSS Backstage 2025 — Berlin, March 10–11

We may see some of you at FOSS Backstage next week, a must-attend event if you’re passionate about the future of open source. It’s the perfect place to connect, learn, and help shape what’s next for FOSS. Can’t make it to the conference? Don’t miss the fringe events, they’re completely free and organised by great hosts.

Want to Get More Involved?

Volunteers from all over the world and from our team make regular contributions to the open source Apache CouchDB project. Have you ever wanted to make your own addition? CouchDB can always use more contributions, and would welcome yours! If you are knowledgeable in any one of these fields: Erlang, Elixir, writing documentation, client-side JavaScript, Docker, or continuous integration with Jenkins on Linux, macOS, FreeBSD or Windows, CouchDB would love to count on your help.

Wishing You a Great 2025

That’s it for our first newsletter of the year! From everyone at the Neighbourhoodie team, we’re wishing you an excellent 2025.

We hope to see you at events, hear from you online, and help you achieve your goals. Until next time 👋

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