At AWS re:Invent, Couchbase unveiled Capella, a columnar service that revolutionizes its cloud data platform, empowering organizations to build modern, real-time adaptive applications. The newly announced Capella columnar service includes columnar storage and extensive data integration within Couchbase as a service (DBaaS) database.

This integration enables real-time data analysis on the same platform used for operational application workloads.

Traditionally, the database industry has faced obstacles in coordinating real-time analytics and operational applications, hindering true real-time data analysis. Couchbase recognizes this long-standing issue and addresses it with the Capella columnar service.

Capella columnar storage, as a game-changer, seamlessly integrates operational and real-time analytics applications into a unified database platform. This fusion eliminates friction, enabling the delivery of high-quality customer experiences, particularly those involving artificial intelligence. These experiences, known as "adaptive applications," provide contextually hyper-personalized services driven by real-time analytics computations.

One major innovation of Capella columnar service is its ability to eliminate the write-back latency gap for operational applications. This means that real-time analytics results are immediately written back to the operational database and its associated applications.

Key Features of Capella Columnar:

Columnar, log-structured merge (LSM) plus B-tree-based storage engine for scalable analytics performance and capacity. Enhanced MPP computing engine for real-time computation, regardless of data size.

Real-time ingestion capability driven by Apache Kafka, enabling seamless data capture and extraction. Support for file-based reading, importing, and exporting of data stored in AWS S3, supporting various formats. Interactive development using ChatGPT for natural language and SQL++ with Capella iQ for session-based coding.

Native support for Tableau and PowerBI for analysis development and visualization. New data API for reading and writing back analytical measurement results to operational applications.

In possible comparisons, Couchbase emphasizes that Capella columnar provides dedicated and optimized storage containers for transactional operational data and analytical data, offering better performance and scalability compared to MongoDB Atlas.

The announcement also elaborates on the concept of adaptive applications, which can adjust behavior and characteristics based on user preferences, environmental conditions, and real-time data inputs. Couchbase's Capella columnar service aims to support the development of adaptive applications with its unique capabilities.

Capella columnar promises tangible benefits for customers:

• Improved agility and performance through fast, unstructured ingestion within Capella-supported applications.
• Real-time ingestion of data streams from enterprise data sources, allowing for multiple data analyses in a single statement.
• Reduced development complexity for developers by using a unified SQL++ query language in both operational and analytical applications.
• Reduced complexity and costs by consolidating operational and real-time analytics in a single data platform.