Last evening I started a little couch development project, in front of the TV. The data I am used to work with is mostly in JSON format already so I read a bit on couchDB. Since my use-case allows storage in the cloud I was curious about Frank van der Linden’s cloudant-connector plugin so I gave it a swing.
Cloudant is the cloud version of CouchDb. Which is invented by Damien Katz, who also was involved by the creation of the NSF.
I found on the internet a very nice easy to use open source project, Java-cloudant, who is doing the heavy lifting in the interaction with Cloudant.
I guess for an XPages developer this is the easiest way to get started with Cloudant. You can also load the libraries yourself as Stephan Wissel describes. At this point I am not sure what option I like best.
It turns out with Frank’s plugin you can develop really fast rapid. If you look at the HR-assistant application he has worked on you find some great examples how to use it. Nevertheless that project was too sophisticated for me to adapt in my 2hr sample app. My goal was to learn more about couchDb and IBM Cloudant and working with documents & views in general and not (yet) building applications around it.
So this is the result I achieved in my restricted time:
Nothing much sophisticated, but a good learning experience which I would like to take with me in my next “couch” project 🙂 The code is available in a Github repo.
In a month Frank is holding a presentation at SUTOL concerning using developing with Cloudant so I am looking forward to hear what he has to say and show there 🙂
Recently(?) IBM Cloudant on Bluemix has a “Lite” pricing plan which is free with restrictions so it’s developers friendly:
Kwintessential Notes 
Hi Patrick, making simple CRUD operations with XPages and Cloudant is fairly easy..For me, this Project helped a lot to understand whats going on behind the curtain: https://www.openntf.org/main.nsf/project.xsp?r=project/XPages%20Fusion%20Application/summary…
The tricky part is not far away tough: saving nested POJOs 🙂
Hi Frederic, thanks for replying! That application is also on my scanner to understand basic CRUD operations towards IBM Cloudant. I am not sure how much the examples differ with Frank’s plugin or Stephan Wissels approach. I guess they all go via an httpclient. The libraries for that may differ.
Would be great if you and Frank do some sort of Q&A webinar on HR assistant if there is sufficient interest in the community so with some basic knowledge how to setup a project any XPage developer should be able to start using Cloudant… (and other Bluemix stuff).
I like the abstraction layer you’ve built in in the application but at first a bit different to understand or to implement in a new project.