CouchDB is a new breed of database for the Internet, geared to meet the needs of today’s dynamic web applications. With this concise introduction, you’ll learn how CouchDB’s simple model for storing, processing, and accessing data makes it ideal for the type of data and rapid response users now demand from your applications—and how easy CouchDB is to set up, deploy, maintain, and scale.

The code-packed examples in this book will help you learn how to work with documents, populate a simple database, replicate data from one database to another, and a host of other tasks.

• Install CouchDB on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, or (if you must) from the source code
• Interact with data through CouchDB’s RESTful API, and use standard HTTP operations, such as PUT, GET, POST, and DELETE
• Use Futon—CouchDB’s web-based interface— to manage databases and documents, and to configure replications
• Learn how to create, update, and delete documents in JSON format, and how to create and delete databases
• Work with design documents to get the formatting and indexing your application requires