Saturday, April 18, 2009

Javascript implementation of CouchDB API in the browser

Some very interesting stuff is happening in the browser space. Damien Katz gives a link to this post by Atul Varma about creating an initial implementation of the CouchDB API in JavaScript.

Damien takes this and runs with it, saying that CouchDB is specifically intended to run in the client, and to provide a form of location transparency where your entire application can be running locally or remotely and you really don't know the difference except that perhaps some of your data is stale until you reconnect to the server.
This is the problem that CouchDB is designed to solve. Not just putting your data and apps into the cloud, but onto your laptop, your phone and your local office server. Fully query-able and editable in your browser, your data is available wherever you are, despite network outages, air travel or blocked access.
I like how Damien implies that the cloud doesn't include just servers, but also your own machine - that your client machine is part of the cloud. It's a very different way of thinking about web architectures. I highly recommend you keep an eye on this space.

2 comments:

turibe said...

Interesting. I found this while searching google for JavaScript implementation, to find out when ES5 would get implemented in the browsers. Is this Mezzo David?

Unknown said...

Yep, it's Mezzo David! Who else could it be? :)