So what is NoSQL actually good for?

Everything, right? Well, maybe in the fevered imagination of product marketeers, but NoSQL isn’t a panacea. There are some big differences between the various NoSQL products, as well as lots of hype and marketing around the technology in general. And then there is good old fashioned experience. Hype may be sexy, pithy or sometimes even funny, but experience is real and trumps all of that. Give me experience, both the good and the bad, any day.

That’s what we get to hear from Konstantin Tadenev, Principal Architect at UPS in his presentation at Couchbase CONNECT. Konstantin explains in detail how UPS leverages the Couchbase database to power six common use cases, spread out across 30+ applications within UPS. He doesn’t attempt to explore every single possible application or microservice that might be able to use NoSQL technology — that’s typically the purview of Sales and Marketing. Instead, he takes a practical approach, based on his actual experience at UPS, to describe how they use Couchbase.

Furthermore, I think that UPS is a great organization to look at because it’s a customer service, trucking, airline, IOT, and advanced technology company (think drones and self-driving trucks), all wrapped up into one. UPS probably has to contend with every single business challenge around data management scalability, performance, reliability, and security that there is.

There are a couple of things that I love about this presentation. First off, Konstantin starts with “technology for technology’s sake is meaningless”. I’m a huge fan. If software is not deployed in the field, solving real world business or social problems, then it’s an academic exercise and we all just go home. Konstantin does a great job explaining how NoSQL in general, and Couchbase in particular, solves technical business challenges at UPS.

Secondly, you should definitely scroll down through the comments section below the presentation. There are several interesting exchanges, including how UPS approaches integrating CI/CD into their Couchbase projects. That kind of dialog between experienced users is invaluable.

Konstantin spends most of the presentation walking through the six most common NoSQL use cases at UPS. There are lots of details about how UPS leverages various Couchbase features to address their application requirements. For example, how does UPS use features like Ephemeral Buckets, Collections, and XDCR?; how do architectural concepts like “memory first”, “automatic replication” and “data isolation” help address challenges within their RDBMS and Cloud deployments?

In the final section, Konstantin offers his perspective regarding future feature requests for Couchbase. Given his expertise with the product, in my opinion, his perspective is as valuable as his experience. Understanding where the product needs to grow and how applications can leverage those new features, gives you a glimpse into the future and a preview of how you might benefit from them.

For more details on these in-depth use cases, please see Konstantin’s presentation here.