Introducing the Couchbase PHP Library 1.0

A New World

We are releasing Couchbase Server 1.8 today and with it a complete rewrite of our PHP SDK. This is all good news: We beefed up the internals significantly while keeping the API compatible with previous releases. Yay!

Et tu Moxi?

Earlier versions of the PHP SDK relied on a small proxy server "moxi" between PHP and Couchbase (née Membase) Server. The SDK was only cabable of talking to a single endpoint. Moxi would take care of talking to your Couchbase Server Cluster and abstract away the tracking of nodes that come and go natuarally in such a setup. While that is all good, moxi came with additional administration overhead and a performance penalty.

With today's release 1.0 of our PHP SDK we give you a PHP library that is cluster aware by itself. You don't need to manage a separate moxi installation anymore. Furthermore, you don't need to worry about changes to your Couchbase cluster. Whether new nodes arrive or old news are retired, your PHP code will always be able to talk to the cluster. And best of all, you get raw access to the cluster for maximum speed. Initial benchmarks show 1.5x-2.0x improvement on throughput.

Alright, Alright, Let Me Play!

The new SDK Overview page gives you all details from downloads to getting started guides as well as API documentation and an extensive tutorial to get you going.

Because this is all new code and we want to play fair we are calling this a 1.0.0-beta release, but we are ready to call it final as soon as we get a bunch fo successful user stories and no bug reports.

A Look Ahead

The new foundations for the PHP library allow us to give you more features faster. With Couchbase Server 2.0 around the corner, we can give you access to all its new features right away.