Eventually, no matter what your specialty as designer or developer, you’ll need to save and retrieve data. Thanks fully, we are beginning to get to the point where that does not necessarily mean a bunch of server-side programming and MySQL work. With the new generation of “NoSQL” databases and Javascript getting to the point that it can work on both the client and the server, data is getting easier to work with in the web application.

CouchDB is a nice implementation of the NoSQL concept and is gaining popularity quickly. Because the user can access their data offline, CouchDB is a perfect fit for the handheld device world where internet connections come and go. This tutorial from our friends at nettuts+ is a great intro to the features and a first implementation.