Weekly CouchDB meeting – summary

  • 1.6.0 release: we are making progress, next is checking if all bugs have been fixed
  • BigCouch merge status: Cloudant will now focus on the BigCouch merge, visible progress should happen in the next couple of weeks
  • rcouch merge status: the testing is still in progress, feedback will be provided to the mailing list; merge to the new integration branch can be done after that feedback
  • Code of Conduct: the first version will now be drafted based on the discussion on the mailing list (for details, see "Major Discussions" section below)
  • By-laws: everyone in the community is invited to read the draft and join the discussion (see thread); please note that the bylaws now include a new idea about PMC chair rotation
  • Translation update: German translation is making good progress (see status here)

Major Discussions

Apache CouchDB Diversity Statement (see thread)

This discussion was initiated with the suggestion to establish a project-wide Diversity Statement. First, the idea was brought up to turn this document into a PMC charter, a document that sets out what the PMC values, their commitment to diversity, and their pledge to the project. The second idea was about how merit is being recognised and it was brought up to broaden this around the four areas community, project, documentation and code. "This is what we value. This is what we will recognise. Our promise to the community." (Noah Slater) It was agreed on creating two documents, one for the PMC charter, a second one for diversity.

Discussion: Project by-laws (ongoing discussion; see thread)

Proposal to vote in set of project by-laws that define the specific roles in this community and the decision making procedures that are used. The first draft of the by-laws has been discussed and modified accordingly and can be found here. Comments are very welcome.

Apache CouchDB Developer Code of Conduct (ongoing discussion; see thread)

The PMC initiated a thread on moving forwards establishing an Apache CouchDB Developer Code of Conduct (CoC for short). Example Codes of Conduct from Debian, Python, Django , Bantik, Node.JS and the Node.JS IRC channel policy were as well considered and discussed as transparency, the consequences of infractions and the differentiation between minor offences and major offences, how to deal with profanity and how this applies to IRC and the moderation policy there.

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) / HIPAA 5010 / PIPEDA compliance (see thread)

Question on building applications using CouchDB while having to follow HIPAA compliance. As for the legal topic this is, the community strongly recommended the user get in touch with a lawyer and getting proper compliancy and regulatory guidance.

CouchDB load spike (see thread, see also the same question on StackOverflow)

Setup: CouchDB 1.5.0, database with < 10 GB of data in it and continuous replication. Every few hours (3-4 times per day) they recognise a huge spike that floors the load to around 1.5 and memory usage to close to 100%. It turned out there was a similar issue that was already discussed (link to gist). The user filed issue COUCHDB-2231.

Tips for general CouchDB monitoring and graphs drawing tools to check what's causing huge spikes (from Alexander Shorin, see this reply):

  • Munin plugin for CouchDB monitoring – It doesn’t handle system metrics for the CouchDB process yet, but that will be added soon; users should make sure they have a similar plugin for their monitoring system.
  • Skyline, a detector for spikes and other anomalies
  • Oculus, a metrics correlation tool that makes it very easy to compare multiple graphs for an anomaly period with it.
Release Apache CouchDB 1.6.0 rc3 (ongoing testing and discussion; see thread)

Some issues have already been fixed, the testing is still ongoing. Find all release artefacts we are voting on in this list. If you want to test, please follow this test procedure. The changes since last vote round can be found here.

Releases in the CouchDB Universe

  • yama – mail app, work in progress; syncs CouchDB instance with an email inbox for RESTful email
  • tornado-couchdb 0.2.3 – Blocking and non-blocking (asynchronous) clients for CouchDB using Tornado's httpclient
  • loveseat 0.0.11 – very limited CouchDB interface
  • follow-db-updates 0.0.2 – easy CouchDB _db_changes follower, with older couch pollyfill
  • seneca-couchdb-changes 0.1.0 – emit seneca.js events for all events in a couchdb _changes feed
  • changes-stream 1.0.3 – simple module that handles getting changes from couchdb
  • neuropil 3.0.2 – a lighter and faster registry client for CouchDB based npm server
  • nano 5.8.0 – minimalistic CouchDB driver for node.js
  • couch_tap 0.0.2 – providing a DSL that allows complex CouchDB documents to be converted into rows in a RDBMS' table

Opinions

Use Cases, Questions and Answers

Get involved!

If you want to get into working on CouchDB:

  • rcouch Merge: Erlang hackers and CouchDB users, we need your help with testing and review of the rcouch merge. It's easy! Find the how-to in this post.
  • Here's a list of beginner tickets around our currently ongoing Fauxton-implementation. If you have any questions or need help, don't hesitate to contact us in the couchdb-dev IRC room (#couchdb-dev) – Garren (garren) and Sue (deathbear) are happy to help.
  • You want join us for the updates of CouchDB-Python for Python 3? Take a look at issue 231.

We'd be happy to have you!

Events

Job opportunities for people with CouchDB skills

… and also in the news

Posted on behalf of Lena Reinhard.