Basho has announced the general availability of version 2.0 of its NoSQL database Riak, which adds enhancements to improve the user experience. “The focus is about expanding the flexibility and usability for folks to develop faster on our platform,” said Peter Coppola, VP of Product for Basho.
A major feature in version 2.0 is the full-text search integration with Apache Solr. Previous versions of Riak came with an in-house-built text search. “What this means is an instance of Solr runs with each instance of Riak,” explained Coppola. “The way we look at it is that it tightly pairs the strength with our distributed Riak platform with full text search functionality of Solr.”
The new release also offers new distributed data types, including flags, sets, registers, maps, to simplify application development. The data types are designed to help remove the complexity for the developer and come with pre-built conflict resolution so that users can always write and read.
Riak also allows LevelDB users to split data files across two mount points based on access patterns to achieve low latency for the most frequently accessed data. “This really puts the control with respect to the cost and performance tradeoff in the hands of our customer,” explained Coppola.
In addition, the new release provides higher security by enabling authorization and authentication to manage users and groups. Security measures can now be applied within Riak itself, including data access and functional permissions. The new release also improves operational simplicity by consolidating configuration information and storing it in an easy-to-parse, transparent format.
“The way I look at it,” said Coppola, “we have extended the platform in five major ways: search, security, advanced data types, ease of use, and the tiered storage.”
Information about Riak 2.0 and Riak Enterprise 2.0 are available at http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/.