Changes

At Code4LibCon2008 Dan Scott gave us a taste of yummy CouchDB, a document-oriented database with a RESTful JSON API ([http://couchdb.org/]). Since then, CouchDB has passed the 1.0 mark and landed on desktops, the cloud, and mobile devices. With the advent of CouchApps (web apps served directly from CouchDB) applications can be built that are as easy to install as the replicating of databases (which is super easy!). I’ll discuss the advantages and challenges in designing a CouchApp to be used as a catalog, repository, or directory of resources. Some things are made fairly simple, such as site templating, the outputting of documents in different formats, and the attachment of binary objects to documents. Some things, like document versioning and the modeling of data, are a little trickier, but still straightforward. And some things, such as granular authentication and the integration of search, are tangled enough to produce some head-on-wall banging. But hey, take it easy. It’s time to relax.

Check out some code at [http://github.com/gsf/catlg].