Couchbase NoSQL database users can now get AI vector search in their edge sites and real-time analytics in the AWS cloud with Capella Columnar.
Couchbase supplies its Enterprise Server on-premises database, which combines RDBMS and NoSQL analytics. It has turned this into a Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) offering, Capella, available on AWS, Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform. A third offering is Couchbase Mobile, an embedded document database for mobile, desktop, and custom embedded hardware with built-in synchronization features to Couchbase Enterprise Server and to Capella. Now it is introducing three new capabilities:
- Capella Columnar on AWS enabling real-time analytics as well as operational workloads
- Couchbase Mobile with vector search to support AI large language model (LLM) Inference workloads
- Capella Free Tier for developers
Matt McDonough, SVP of Product and Partners at Couchbase, said: “With the launch of Capella Columnar, we’re solving longstanding challenges in JSON data analytics, enabling businesses to seamlessly integrate insights into their operational applications. Our vector search capabilities in Couchbase Mobile extend this adaptivity to edge and IoT devices, opening up new possibilities for hyper-personalized and context-aware applications.”
Vector search is already available in Couchbase’s Enterprise Server and Capella. It is used in generative AI inferencing by LLMs to build responses to users’ requests. Now Couchbase Lite, the database inside Couchbase Mobile, has got it as well, enabling semantic search and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to provide more accurate responses.
McDonough said: “By enabling on-device vector search, we’re not just speeding up applications and eliminating downtime due to internet outages; we’re opening up new possibilities for secure AI development. Our solution combines the cloud’s scalability to handle massive AI datasets with edge capabilities for immediate, on-device processing. This unique combination, along with our support for multiple search techniques accessible through a single SQL++ query, empowers developers to create sophisticated GenAI applications that can run entirely on-device.”
Couchbase Columnar has been likened to a Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) transactional database within Capella, and analytical processing is kept apart from real-time operations.
Data can be loaded into Capella Columnar from AWS Dynamo, S3, MySQL, and other Apache Kafka-connected source datasets with Change Data Capture effectively synchronizing updates. Columnar is claimed “to make JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) data useful in analytics.” The company said “much semi-structured JSON data remains dormant. Couchbase offers key-value and columnar storage options for operational and analytic workloads on a single platform, providing customers the power and flexibility to make JSON data useful in analytics.”
Columnar facilitates the “parsing, transforming and persisting JSON data into an analysis-ready columnar format. It supports real-time, multisource ingestion of data not only from Couchbase, but also using common systems like Confluent Cloud … to draw data from other third-party JSON or SQL systems.”
With Couchbase’s AI-powered Capella coding assistant, Capella iQ, which writes SQL++, once a metric is calculated, it can be written back immediately to the operational side of Capella, which can then use the metric in its analytics. Couchbase said this can be used to “build in customer-facing metrics in a gaming application to accelerate engagement.”
McDonough added: ”This write-back problem has remained unaddressed by analytic systems for decades because it was too difficult to anticipate what a developer would do with it. Capella Columnar implements the solution, and the needs of AI-powered applications provide the motive.”
We think that Columnar support will be extended to Capella running in the Azure and GCP clouds.
IDC research VP Carl Olofson said Couchbase has “added blended analytic-transaction processing support that leverages the performance advantage of columnar data management together with vector search in support of applications demanding intelligent data access … These are capabilities that the market has been looking for but are hard to find contained in a single product.”
Couchbase competitor SingleStore also supports vector search. Both Couchbase and SingleStore are competing with dedicated vector database suppliers such as Pinecone, Qdrant, Milvus, and Zilliz. They say vector database tech is a product, while Couchbase and SingleStore say it’s a feature.
Capella Columnar is generally available, as is Couchbase Mobile with vector search. The Capella Free Tier will be available in September.
Read a Couchbase announcement blog here. Watch a video on Couchbase Mobile with vector search and learn more here.
