In this talk we'll learn about the basic concepts of the document-oriented database CouchDB, as well as about practical aspects of its use and deployment.

CouchDB brings several revolutionary ideas to the world of databases. First, it's a schema-free database, which means you can conveniently insert both structured data and binary attachments. Second, it offers a rich HTTP API. Third, it uses Map/Reduce concept for aggregation and complex queries, not SQL. Fourth, it contains sophisticated tools for replication, notification mechanisms and makes it possible to run an HTML application straight from the database.

We'll talk about theoretical and practical differences of the schema-free structure compared to the relational model and possibilities and problems that can surprise us during the data modeling. We'll also focus on differences in getting the data from the database, as compared to the well known methods in the SQL world.

All the key features will be demonstrated in a live CouchDB instance, which will be available to you (including the source code). Last but not least, we'll learn how to work with CouchDB in common programming languages.