3.12. Query Servers

3.12.1. Query Servers Definition

Changed in version 2.3: Changed configuration method for Query Servers and Native Query Servers.

CouchDB delegates computation of design documents functions to external query servers. The external query server is a special OS process which communicates with CouchDB over standard input/output using a very simple line-based protocol with JSON messages.

An external query server may be defined with environment variables following this pattern:

  1. COUCHDB_QUERY_SERVER_LANGUAGE="PATH ARGS"

Where:

  • LANGUAGE: is a programming language which code this query server may execute. For instance, there are PYTHON, RUBY, CLOJURE and other query servers in the wild. This value in lowercase is also used for ddoc field language to determine which query server processes the functions.

    Note, that you may set up multiple query servers for the same programming language, but you have to name them differently (like PYTHONDEV etc.).

  • PATH: is a system path to the executable binary program that runs the query server.

  • ARGS: optionally, you may specify additional command line arguments for the executable PATH.

The default query server is written in JavaScript, running via Mozilla SpiderMonkey. It requires no special environment settings to enable, but is the equivalent of these two variables:

  1. COUCHDB_QUERY_SERVER_JAVASCRIPT="/opt/couchdb/bin/couchjs /opt/couchdb/share/server/main.js"
  2. COUCHDB_QUERY_SERVER_COFFEESCRIPT="/opt/couchdb/bin/couchjs /opt/couchdb/share/server/main-coffee.js"

By default, couchjs limits the max runtime allocation to 64MiB. If you run into out of memory issue in your ddoc functions, you can adjust the memory limitation (here, increasing to 512 MiB):

  1. COUCHDB_QUERY_SERVER_JAVASCRIPT="/usr/bin/couchjs -S 536870912 /usr/share/server/main.js"

For more info about the available options, please consult couchjs -h.

See also

The Mango Query Server is a declarative language that requires no programming, allowing for easier indexing and finding of data in documents.

The Native Erlang Query Server allows running ddocs written in Erlang natively, bypassing stdio communication and JSON serialization/deserialization round trip overhead.

3.12.2. Query Servers Configuration

[query_server_config]

  • commit_freq

    Specifies the delay in seconds before view index changes are committed to disk. The default value is 5:

    1. [query_server_config]
    2. commit_freq = 5

  • os_process_limit

    limit

    Hard limit on the number of OS processes usable by Query Servers. The default value is 100:

    1. [query_server_config]
    2. os_process_limit = 100

    Setting os_process_limit too low can result in starvation of Query Servers, and manifest in os_process_timeout errors, while setting it too high can potentially use too many system resources. Production settings are typically 10-20 times the default value.

  • os_process_soft_limit

    soft limit

    Soft limit on the number of OS processes usable by Query Servers. The default value is 100:

    1. [query_server_config]
    2. os_process_soft_limit = 100

    Idle OS processes are closed until the total reaches the soft limit.

    For example, if the hard limit is 200 and the soft limit is 100, the total number of OS processes will never exceed 200, and CouchDB will close all idle OS processes until it reaches 100, at which point it will leave the rest intact, even if some are idle.

  • reduce_limit

    Controls Reduce overflow error that raises when output of reduce functions is too big:

    1. [query_server_config]
    2. reduce_limit = true

    Normally, you don’t have to disable (by setting false value) this option since main propose of reduce functions is to reduce the input.

3.12.3. Native Erlang Query Server

[native_query_servers]

Warning

Due to security restrictions, the Erlang query server is disabled by default.

Unlike the JavaScript query server, the Erlang one does not run in a sandbox mode. This means that Erlang code has full access to your OS, file system and network, which may lead to security issues. While Erlang functions are faster than JavaScript ones, you need to be careful about running them, especially if they were written by someone else.

CouchDB has a native Erlang query server, allowing you to write your map/reduce functions in Erlang.

First, you’ll need to edit your local.ini to include a [native_query_servers] section:

  1. [native_query_servers]
  2. enable_erlang_query_server = true

To see these changes you will also need to restart the server.

Let’s try an example of map/reduce functions which count the total documents at each number of revisions (there are x many documents at version “1”, and y documents at “2”… etc). Add a few documents to the database, then enter the following functions as a view:

  1. %% Map Function
  2. fun({Doc}) ->
  3.     <<K,_/binary>> = proplists:get_value(<<"_rev">>, Doc, null),
  4.     V = proplists:get_value(<<"_id">>, Doc, null),
  5.     Emit(<<K>>, V)
  6. end.
  8. %% Reduce Function
  9. fun(Keys, Values, ReReduce) -> length(Values) end.

If all has gone well, after running the view you should see a list of the total number of documents at each revision number.

Additional examples are on the users@couchdb.apache.org mailing list.

CouchDB’s search subsystem can be configured via the dreyfus configuration section.

[dreyfus]

  • name

    The name and location of the Clouseau Java service required to enable Search functionality. Defaults to clouseau@127.0.0.1.

  • retry_limit

    CouchDB will try to reconnect to Clouseau using a bounded exponential backoff with the following number of iterations. Defaults to 5.

  • limit

    The number of results returned from a global search query if no limit is specified. Defaults to 25.

  • limit_partitions

    The number of results returned from a search on a partition of a database if no limit is specified. Defaults to 2000.

  • max_limit

    The maximum number of results that can be returned from a global search query (or any search query on a database without user-defined partitions). Attempts to set ?limit=N higher than this value will be rejected. Defaults to 200.

  • max_limit_partitions

    The maximum number of results that can be returned when searching a partition of a database. Attempts to set ?limit=N higher than this value will be rejected. If this config setting is not defined, CouchDB will use the value of max_limit instead. If neither is defined, the default is 2000.

3.12.5. Mango

Mango is the Query Engine that services the _find, endpoint.

[mango]

  • index_all_disabled

    Set to true to disable the “index all fields” text index. This can lead to out of memory issues when there are documents with nested array fields. Defaults to false.

    [mango] index_all_disabled = false

  • default_limit

    Sets the default number of results that will be returned in a _find response. Individual requests can override this by setting limit directly in the query parameters. Defaults to 25.

    [mango] default_limit = 25

  • index_scan_warning_threshold

    index scan warning

    This sets the ratio between documents scanned and results matched that will generate a warning in the _find response. For example, if a query requires reading 100 documents to return 10 rows, a warning will be generated if this value is 10.

    Defaults to 10. Setting the value to 0 disables the warning.

    [mango] index_scan_warning_threshold = 10