What is CouchDB

Question

So what is couchDB exactly? taking out all the fancy technical terms.

Is it an alternative to MySQL basically?

Thanks

Answer 1

Basically, in MySQL you store rows and tables. In CouchDB you store documents (which can be also describes as rows and tables, but lets get to the highest abstraction level). It isn't alternative to MySQL, as it it designed for different purposes.

Answer 2

From the CouchDB site, it's a documented oriented database. I think that it is not mean to replace MySQL. You can check this post When to use CouchDB vs RDBMS for a analisis of the RDBMS vs NoSQL databases.

Answer 3

The main difference is that couchDB is document based, not table based, but I suggest reading more on their site.

The introduction section at the couchDB site is pretty easy to read: