Beginning CouchDB (Expert's Voice in Open Source) [Paperback]

Joe Lennon (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430272376 | ISBN-13: 978-1430272373 | Publication Date: December 16, 2009 | Edition: 1

We often talk about Cloud Computing, but this is an actual, concrete piece of it. And it does reside on a normal PC right in front of you, not on distant servers on another continent. This book gives a beginning developer a way into manipulating cloud data without having to pay homage to SQL gurus or giving money to cloud providers. The tech is there and it works now. We show you how.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Joe Lennon is a software developer from Cork, Ireland. Joe works for Core International, the largest provider of human resources and payroll software in Ireland. He is an experienced PL/SQL and Oracle systems developer, who specializes in the development of Web applications. He is skilled in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, particularly in JavaScript frameworks such as Prototype, jQuery, YUI and ExtJS. In 2008, he was hired to develop Learn French by Podcast, a highly popular and profitable language-learning website. To date, Joe has written numerous articles for IBM's developerWorks, and regularly writes technical articles and tutorials on his personal blog at www.joelennon.ie.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430272376
• ISBN-13: 978-1430272373
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,285,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Easier learning curve but needs polish, May 9, 2010

By 

D. Cottlehuber (Wellington, New Zealand) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beginning CouchDB (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

With such a fast-moving target as a pre-1.0 app like CouchDB, this book does a good job of bringing you up to speed on CouchDB and some of its supporting tools like CouchApp. It is a noticeably gentler pace than the definitive CouchDB guide (focusing on brevity and concepts) and tries to give more explanation in a step-by-step fashion.

However, overall the book doesn't deal with the "why" so much as the "what". This is good to get you started with, but will not be a book I would likely refer back to much. As a niggling point, there are small but annoying differences between code & corresponding text in several places, and each chapter seems to use a different example. Some continuity would both smooth things out, and make the book feel more cohesive. The introduction to javascript and JSON was useful to me, but more skilled web 2.0 people will not see the need for this. As a beginner, the RESTful approach could have been worth elaborating on. Some parts of the book feel faster-paced than others - perhaps depending on your existing knowledge.

Finally, I was less than impressed with the PDF version of this book. The images are low-res and therefore largely illegible, especially in the later stages of the book. A lot of the images were unnecessary. The sample code can't be cut and pasted, which for me was one of the top 2 reasons to grab the PDF version. This could be the Mac Preview app I am using but still it's annoying that you can't download the code snippets from anywhere, nor cut'n'paste the content from the PDF.


The publisher could easily address the points above, especially in the online version. This is a good get-started book but will likely suffer from rapid aging as the CouchDB ecosystem continues to grow.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction to CounchDB, January 17, 2010

By 

Eric R. Lamb "Slygon" (SLC, UT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beginning CouchDB (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

This is a great book to introduce you to CouchDB. It is well written and easy to follow, walking you through every step from how to get and install CouchDB to how to set it up and manage databases. I highly recommend it.