Couchbase is introducing a new query language that unites legacy SQL to the modern NoSQL, providing what the company says is the best of both worlds for developers and the enterprise.
“NoSQL is really playing an increasingly important role in this across every industry. Companies are focusing more and more attention on building their digital economy businesses,” said Bob Wiederhold, CEO of Couchbase. N1QL is the only SQL query language that’s based on SQL but can be used on JSON-based document databases, Wiederhold explained.
With this new query language called N1QL, pronounced “nickel,” Couchbase is extending decades of industry investment in SQL to the unmatched flexibility and scalability of Couchbase Server, resulting in radically improved developer agility and productivity.
“N1QL makes it easier for our customers to develop and support a much broader set of mobile and IT applications, and use cases using Couchbase,” Wiederhold said.
N1QL extends the syntax to documents, providing additions to the SQL syntax to work with document databases, and nesting and un-nesting. “The real beauty here is the solid mathematics that makes up the foundation on which this query language is built,” said Ravi Mayuram, senior vice president of products and engineering. “This query language extends something people already know.”
N1QL will make it easier to access and manipulate data that’s stored in Couchbase, according to Wiederhold. “More and more companies are coming to the conclusion that NoSQL databases are a better fit for these web, mobile and IOT apps and our customers are driving us hard to support a broader and broader set of uses and application types so that NoSQL could be their primary database for all these digital economy databases,” Wiederhold said.
It will make it easier for developers to build apps that require complex queries and for third parties to build integrations with Couchbase. Along with developers, business and data analysts, along with system administrators will benefit from the new solution, Mayuram noted, as they are trained to work with SQL. “As a result, we think the 4.0 release will allow us to dramatically expand our footprint with customers and put us in a position to be their trusted operational database partner for all of their digital economy needs,” Wiederhold said.
For more information, visit www.couchbase.com.