CouchDB: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 24. Recipes

This chapter shows some common tasks and how to solve them with CouchDB using best practices and easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions.

Banking

Banks are serious business. They need serious databases to store serious transactions and serious account information. They can’t lose any money. Ever. They also can’t create money. A bank must be in balance. All the time.

Conventional wisdom says a database needs to support transactions to be taken seriously. CouchDB does not support transactions in the traditional sense (although it works transactionally), so you could conclude CouchDB is not well suited to store bank data. Besides, would you trust your money to a couch? Well, we would. This chapter explains why.

Accountants Don’t Use Erasers

Say you want to give $100 to your cousin Paul for the New York cheesecake he sent to you. Back in the day, you had to travel all the way to New York and hand Paul the money, or you could send it via (paper) mail. Both methods were considerably inconvenient, so people started looking for alternatives. At one point, banks offered to take care of the money and make sure it arrived at Paul’s bank safely without headaches. Of course, they’d charge for the convenience, but you’d be happy to pay a little fee if it could save a trip to New York. Behind the scenes, the bank would send somebody with your money to give it to Paul’s bank—the same procedure, but another person was dealing with the trouble. Banks could also batch money transfers; ...