Introducing Capella iQ, a Generative AI-powered Coding Assistant
Couchbase has introduced Capella iQ, a Generative AI-powered developer’s coding assistant built into the Capella Workbench. Capella iQ is designed to dramatically improve developer productivity by enabling conversations that help with writing SQL++ queries, building indexes, defining text searches, writing application-specific code, and creating and running functional test cases.
Capella iQ lets you code at the speed of thought
Developers live in a text-based world and need to code at the speed of thought. Capella iQ can keep developers in the flow for longer periods of time. Capella iQ allows developers to interact with Couchbase using natural language conversations and in the background, it enhances prompts with intelligent solutions as code, data, queries, tests and more.
During the conversation, developers can create sample data, enhance and refine it, and then build queries upon the new data set. These queries can be debugged as needed and test cases can be designed to exercise it.
Capella iQ can save developers an enormous amount of time. Watch our video to see how.
Capella iQ knows Couchbase
Capella iQ understands the data organizational structure inside Couchbase, including the definitions for the database, the scopes with the database, and the collections of documents that are members of a scope. iQ also can read the metadata within JSON so it understands the query structures you are using. Capella iQ does not, however, submit the actual data values to the LLM it is using.
Figure 1. The Capella iQ interface with prompt dialog on the left, requesting query and index assistance.
Capella iQ speaks the Developer’s language
Capella iQ can compose sample program functions in the language of choice for the developer. And it can write test cases too.
Figure 2. The results from a request to write a Python program to create sample documents.
Capella iQ helps Developers with Security
Capella iQ is built to keep developers on track without exposing them to unintentional risk. Capella iQ prompts are designed to keep the LLM focused on Couchbase-specific information, so it will not answer unusual or unrelated questions. Capella iQ prompts are also designed to avoid sharing information unnecessarily, including internal data. While Capella iQ does read document metadata such as field names in the document in order to create queries, it does not send live data to the LLM.
Capella iQ interacts with both LLMs and built-in Couchbase features. For example, a user can ask for sample data, and a query to insert that data into the database. Then it can ask the Index Advisor in Couchbase for assistance in building the correct index for that query.
Additional Couchbase Capella Service Enhancements
Couchbase added several updates to the Couchbase Capella Database-as-a-Service, that further enhance the developer experience, increase efficiency, and make it easier to operate the cloud database platform. The customer benefits include:
Integrated and simplified developer experience
Couchbase Capella has added to the stable of IDE integrations it supports. Adding to its recent integration with Netlify, Capella adds integrations with popular developer tools, Vercel and the IntelliJ family of IDEs to reduce friction for developers and development teams.
Performance scaling with intelligent operations
Capella can dynamically scale the disk storage and input/output operations per second (IOPS), Capella clusters can handle growing workloads more efficiently, resulting in faster response times with an improved user experience. The increase in disk IOPS enables Capella clusters to handle higher levels of concurrent read and write operations. This ensures that applications remain highly available even during peak usage periods and contributes further to Capella’s best-in-class price performance.
Stronger security and governance
Capella and Couchbase have achieved independent validation for PCI DSS 4.0 and CSA STAR Level 2 compliance. These enhancements complement the SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance that Couchbase Capella has already achieved, meeting broad enterprise security and trust requirements for cloud applications.
Database On/Off
Couchbase has recently added the ability to turn a running database cluster off when not in use, without losing its data. Developers can better control their costs, especially during the development and testing phases of their project.
Downloadable Backups
Capella also recently added the ability to download backup files to S3 or other locations, making recovery significantly easier. These downloads can be scheduled as well.
