A new mobile version of the CouchDB database system, called CouchOne Mobile, is available for Google's Android operating system. The mobile version is still at a relatively early stage of development, but it will allow developers to take advantage of CouchDB's sophisticated replication functionality to synchronize data between desktop and mobile applications.

CouchDB is a schema-less document-based database that uses JSON as a storage format and JavaScript as a query language. It is popular in the so-called NoSQL community and is increasingly seeing deployment in high-profile business and scientific computing environments.

CouchDB performs well on enterprise-class hardware, but there is a growing need for it to be equally well-supported on client systems. Mozilla Messaging uses CouchDB as the storage layer for the Raindrop communication platform and Linux distributor Canonical adopted CouchDB last year to power Ubuntu's cloud synchronization service.

Deploying CouchDB for end-user applications has proven difficult, however, due in part to the complexity of the software's Erlang dependencies and other factors. This has posed challenges for Ubuntu and other software projects that want to take advantage of CouchDB's replication features on the client side, particularly on netbooks and mobile devices.

The new mobile version of CouchDB for Android makes it easier to get the database software onto handsets. The idea is that mobile application developers can make the local instance of CouchDB on the handset synchronize with the remove server, making data easily accessible to native mobile applications even when connectivity is down or the remote server is otherwise inaccessible.

"CouchOne already solves the data sync problem for you. Users expect to be able to take their data wherever they go and sometimes, if not often, that means they can't access the cloud and need a local copy. CouchOne Mobile for Android lets you build web-apps or native apps that take full advantage of CouchDB's built-in, reliable peer-to-peer sync facilities," the project's website explains.

This software is a step in the right direction for mobile CouchDB usage, but it's still a work in progress. It's a relatively heavyweight solution, with its own built-in Web server and JavaScript interpreter. Although it's a bit heavy, it offers the advantage of being a fully-functional CouchDB stack. The developers are continuing to work on optimization, with the aim of reducing the memory footprint and the on-disk size of the database files.

It's worth noting that the idea of CouchDB on smartphones is not new. Palm has its own lightweight native database framework that can interoperate with the CouchDB replication protocol and previous work has already been done by the third-party developer community to bring CouchDB to Nokia's FOSS-friendly N900 smartphone.

CouchOne Mobile is being developed by CouchIO, a CouchDB hosting and engineering company that was founded by CouchDB creator Damien Katz. The company has recently changed its name to CouchOne. For more details about CouchOne Mobile, you can refer to the company's website.