Today we’re excited to announce the release of Couchbase Server 4.0 Release Candidate (RC0) for testing. Release Candidate improves on the Couchbase Server 4.0 RC0 release from June with quality improvements. 4.0 release is a major release with major architectural advancements and brand new capabilities. Let’s look at a brief overview of the Couchbase Server 4.0 RC0.

Simplicity of SQL combined with flexibility of JSON: New N1QL Query Language

N1QL is the powerful new query language from Couchbase for querying rich data at scale. It combines the power of SQL with the flexibility of JSON.

N1QL presents easy and familiar SQL syntax (i.e SELECT … FROM … WHERE …) to quickly develop scalable applications that work with next generation database systems. It allows for flexible filter expressions, aggregate expressions, JOINs and many other features to build a rich application.

We strongly encourage you to try out N1QL and we guarantee you’ll love it! To learn more about N1QL, visit the post introducing N1QL. To get started with N1QL visit our getting started tutorial here.

N1QL also enables ODBC and JDBC connectivity. You can find the enhanced Simba drivers here that can work with both the standard SQL 92 and N1QL dialects through the smart Collaborative Query Execution. You can find the up to date Simba ODBC and JDBC drivers for Couchbase at the Simba website.

New Indexing for responsive N1QL Queries with Global Secondary Indexing (GSI)

In addition to the existing MapReduce-based indexes known as views, Couchbase Server provides a global secondary index (GSI). With GSI, you can access your documents faster by using secondary index fields without the overhead of MapReduce.

GSIs provides fast access for N1QL queries by fundamentally changing the way indexing is performed in NoSQL databases;

Improves index efficiency by avoiding gather-scatter and index working set management

Improves application scalability by allowing indexes to partition and scale independently

You can find more information on Global Secondary Indexing in the new documentation at developer.couchbase.com .

Multi-Dimensional Scaling for Independently Scaling Queries and Indexing

Multi-Dimensional Scaling enables enterprises to optimize hardware capacity by allocating resources based on the workload of a specific service. MDS avoids resource contention by performing queries, maintaining indexes, and writing data within independent zones in a cluster. This gets around inefficiencies of require participation from every node to perform a query or maintain an index. With MDS in Couchbase Server 4.0, this problem by scaling data independent of queries and indexes.

You can learn more about multi-dimensional scaling and new deployment topologies at developer.couchbase.com.

Advanced Storage Engine: ForestDB

Couchbase Server 4.0 leverages ForestDB to store secondary indexes. ForestDB is a state of the art storage engine engineered with solid state drives in mind. ForestDB bring in efficiencies with the new B+Trie tree structure when indexing to reduce the depth of a tree and compress indexes especially with larger keys. ForestDB takes advantage of multi-core processors by executing multiple reads and writes at the same time, while SSD optimizations not only improve performance, they improve the lifespan of solid state drives.

You can learn more about ForestDB by visiting developer.couchbase.com.

Simplified Security Compliance

Security is a top concern and many enterprises impose internal controls or have to comply with external rules and regulations. With Couchbase Server 4.0, you get simplified security controls for compliance with security standards from PCI to HIPAA to FISMA and more. Version 4.0 comes with native LDAP integration for admin account management and the new auditing capability lets you track admin actions with great level of detail. This is all in addition to our existing security capabilities such as the encryption of data at rest and on the wire.

You can find more about the security enhacements in 4.0 in the technical documentation at developer.couchbase.com.

Powerful Global Data Distribution with Cross Datacenter Replication Filtering

XDCR can be used for many purposes, but for some users XDCR is a means of making data available to geographically distributed locations with low latency. In this case, with filtering you no longer have to carry the entire set of data in a given bucket but can filter data to place pieces to the specific geographies.

Here are different scenarios were filtering with XDCR will be useful:

Minimize network traffic by delivering data relevant to geography with a filter.

Isolate and maintaining reference data across many regional deployments by filtering XDCR replication to only include reference data.

Download and Experience the power and functionality of Couchbase Server 4.0 RC0!

We are releasing the release candidate to get your feedback before we finalize the product. It is important to note that, even though release candidate comes with improved quality, it is not ready for production deployments today. We are continuing to improve the product so your experience with the final product may be different than what you will experience with the release candidate on the functionality and performance of the product.

Here is how you can get started with Couchbase Server 4.0 RC0 today.

You can find more information on Couchbase Server 4.0 at developer.couchbase.com or visit our Couchbase Server 4.0 page .

. For step by step guidance, visit our getting started guide for Couchbase Server 4.0 RC0.

If you want to jump right in, you can download the developer preview from our downloads page.

If you are looking to develop in Java, .Net, Node or other languages with native SDKs, download the latest SDKs available at “client libraries” section of the downloads page.

To get more information on the ODBC and JDBC drivers that go with Couchbase Server 4.0, please visit the Simba blog post annoucing the new release candidate drivers.