What is IBM® Cloudant®?

How it’s used

Serverless web app and API

Diagram showing how to host static website content on GitHub Pages and implement the application back end, using IBM Cloud Functions

Serverless web app and API

In this tutorial, you’ll create a serverless web application by hosting static website content on GitHub Pages and implementing the application back end, using IBM Cloud Functions.

Mobile app with serverless

Diagram showing how to use IBM Cloud Functions along with cognitive and data services to build a serverless back end for a mobile app

Mobile app with serverless

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to use IBM Cloud Functions along with cognitive and data services to build a serverless back end for a mobile app.

Find anomalies in IoT data

Diagram showing how to set up an IoT device and gather data in the IBM Watson IoT Platform

Find anomalies in IoT data

This tutorial shows how to set up an IoT device and gather data in the IBM Watson IoT® Platform. Create visualizations and use advanced ML services to analyze historical data and detect anomalies.

Open hybrid multicloud

Diagram showing how to pair the API and powerful replication protocol of Cloudant with Apache CouchDB in a hybrid cloud environment

Open hybrid multicloud

This tutorial shows how to pair the API and powerful replication protocol of Cloudant with Apache CouchDB in a hybrid cloud environment.

Cloudant features

Cloudant details

2022 Top Rated Awards

TrustRadius Honors IBM Cloudant

IBM Cloudant is recognized as a top leader across multiple categories: DBaaS, NoSQL and Non-relational Databases.

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Frequently asked questions

Get answers to the most commonly asked questions about this product.

What does IBM Cloudant manage for me?

Cloudant handles software and hardware provisioning, management and scaling, and support. You'll receive high availability and elastic scaling of the hardware as your provisioned throughput capacity needs change. Learn about the other benefits of database as a service (DBaaS).

 

What is a document data store?

Document data stores are represented in JSON, where each document is itself a complex data structure. Documents can contain nested structures of various data types, and users can query these structures, retrieving or updating the document, or portions of it, without locking down the database. Documents are stored and retrieved through a unique primary key.

Why JSON?

JSON’s appeal stems partly from its schema, which can rapidly evolve without admin intervention. JSON offers an elegant model for persisting Java or JavaScript objects due to its affinity with JavaScript — no need for heavyweights like OpenJPA or Hibernate to build a data-layer solution. Storing a JSON document to represent a real object is fairly intuitive.

How is Cloudant different than CouchDB?

While Cloudant is API-compatible with Apache CouchDB, unlike CouchDB, Cloudant has layered additional open source technologies for full-text search and geospatial indexing capabilities. Both share a common replication protocol, so you can synchronize copies of your Cloudant data to a remote CouchDB instance — or vice versa — with a click. Explore the differences.

What is offline-first architecture?

Offline-first architecture means building an app without an internet connection; the architecture lets you interact with your app without connectivity. Using Cloudant Mobile Sync, mobile apps can collect and read data when the network is unavailable. Once the connection is established, the data will sync with Cloudant. Cloudant also works with Hoodie and PouchDB.

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