Additions to the Couchbase Capella database-as-a-service boost its ability to handle both operational and analytical workloads and leverage vector search capabilities – critical for AI applications – from anywhere.

Couchbase is boosting the combined operational and analytical capabilities of its Capella database-as-a-service with expanded columnar and vector search functionality for developing next-generation “adaptive” applications – including those with AI capabilities.

The company this week also launched Capella Free Tier access that allows developers to begin working with the cloud database, including learning Capella at their own pace and the ability to use community-supported extensions.

“We operate at the center of AI, real-time analytics, mobile and edge – which are all key opportunities,” said Matt McDonough, Couchbase senior vice president of products and partners, in an interview with CRN.

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Couchbase, one of the leading next-generation database providers, offers Capella as a platform for developing enterprise applications for performing operational, transactional, AI, search, mobile and analytical tasks.

The company launched Capella, a fully managed and automated cloud database based on the company’s Couchbase database server, on Amazon Web Services in 2021. Capella was touted as providing developers with more flexibility and performance-at-scale for enterprise applications.

This week Couchbase announced the general availability of Capella Columnar on AWS, which makes it possible to develop enterprise applications that incorporate real-time data analysis capabilities alongside operational workloads within a single database.

Developing applications on a single database that incorporate operational and analytical functions has traditionally been a challenge. Structured data is often stored and transmitted between applications using the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format.

But JSON can be difficult to use for traditional analytics systems, according to Couchbase. By supporting blended analytic-transaction processing, Capella Columnar addresses the challenge of “parsing, transforming and persisting JSON data into an analysis-ready columnar format,” according to the company announcement, supporting real-time, multi-source ingestion of data from Couchbase and other data sources.

McDonough said Capella Columnar essentially acts as a data store for generative AI applications.

The company also announced the general availability of Couchbase Mobile with vector search, providing both similarity and hybrid search in mobile and edge applications. Vector search, a key database functionality for data-hungry AI applications, indexes and stores data using vector embeddings that speed up data query, search and retrieval.

“That’s really critical for building out AI capabilities,” McDonough said. “I think that’s unique with Couchbase. We offer vector search no matter where you are, mobile or at the edge in a disconnected environment. We offer vector everywhere. I think that’s one of our key differentiators.”

Couchbase said the Capella Columnar and mobile vector search capabilities reduce the costs and complexities of developing “adaptive applications” that run from the cloud to the edge. Couchbase uses “adaptive applications” to describe next generation “hyper-personalized, contextualized” business applications, McDonough said.

And McDonough said the new free tier announcement is key to these announcements by providing a “perpetual free tier with generous hibernation periods” for test development use cases.

Capella Free Tier is a free developer environment that allows developers “to evaluate and explore products and test new features without time constraints,” according to the Couchbase news announcement. Developers also have access to numerous community-supported extensions such as cbshell 1.0 and plugins such as Ionic Capacitor for Couchbase Lite. The free tier is available starting Sept. 9.

McDonough said the advances in Couchbase Capella are being well-received by the company’s channel partners – especially systems integrators – to whom customers are looking for guidance in AI and generative AI. “And what are the different building blocks that [customers] need to be successful building AI-based applications,” McDonough said. “I think our story fits really well into that.”

The announcements are also being welcomed by ISVs and cloud service providers who develop solutions on the Couchbase Capella platform. “Performance and scale, that’s been our game,” McDonough said. “That’s critical for AI applications.”

“Real-time operations and analytics require easy access to data from diverse sources across an entire business,” said Paul Mac Farland, senior vice president of partner and innovation ecosystem at Confluent, a leading developer of real-time streaming data technology. “Confluent’s complete data streaming platform for Apache Kafka and Apache Flink captures events from any system and feeds them into Couchbase Capella for real-time insights at scale,” Mac Farland said in a statement. “Together with Couchbase, we empower businesses with the secure, governed, high quality data and analytics needed to fuel the next generation of real-time customer experiences and operational workloads.”