CouchDB

CouchDB, a new non-relational data storage mechanism I might have to play with (as it’s open source)

What I want now is that you go back to the beginning where you only want to store data. Forget everything you know about relational data, normalization and all the things that come with that. Be a newbie, you only want to store data.

Some (simple) sample PHP code from the PHP Library to CouchDb that frees you from the actual HTTP and XML handling of the REST API:

  
<?php
include 'CouchDb/Couch.php';
$couch = new Couch($host, $db);
$couch->running() or die('CouchDb offline');
$doc = new CouchDocument;
$doc->set('Name', 'Derick');
$doc->age = 27;
$couch->save($doc);
?>
  
  

...and I’ll finish with a stellar quote…

MySQL makes it very easy to create storage engines for their database. They abstract away all the SQL and leave you with the job of saving and retrieving of data. It’d be quite easy to put CouchDb under MySQL this way. There’s already a REST engine that can be used for that. With this, you would be able to store your data like you are used to in MySQL but you could use CouchDb for fast and efficient data retrieval and replication.