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Couchbase Capella Team Collaboration

Summary​

Qarbine extends collaboration for modern data and AI teams using popular tools. Developers and analysts rely on vendor desktop or web tools to interact with their databases. However, these tools are typically single-user oriented. This tutorial uses Couchbase Capella as an example tool for team collaboration. The techniques described apply across the board to many other environments.

Collaborative Capella Work using Qarbine​

Overview​

The Capella console is a single-user oriented tool. This can greatly inhibit team productivity and knowledge sharing- especially with distributed teams. This document describes how to transform the single-user oriented tool into one that better supports collaborative teamwork.

Qarbine enables queries and AI prompts developed across team members to be easily shared and discovered. This improves everyone’s productivity and is especially important as more complex GenAI vector search features are used by modern application developers.

Preparation​

The first step is to set up a folder in the Qarbine catalog to share components. Multiple folders can be defined and Qarbine’s Windows Explorer folder metaphor helps teams stay organized. This writeup uses a shared folder, but you can create private ones too.

Sign on to Qarbine and open the Catalog Browser.

  

Determine which folder your team will share Capella oriented knowledge within. In this example a folder is created within the “public” main folder.

  

Enter a folder name

  

The folder is created and selected.

  

Using the Capella Console​

Setting Things Up​

Sign on to your account at https://cloud.couchbase.com.

  

Review your available clusters and projects.

  

Navigate to the cluster of interest by clicking on its name. The following example page heading is shown.

  

Click on the highlighted tab below.

  

Click on the highlighted tab below.

  

Set your query context using the 2 dropdowns.

  

Writing Queries​

Type in your query in the topmost area as shown below.

  

This is regular Capella console interaction.

Sharing Queries Across Team Members​

You can store arbitrary files in the Qarbine catalog including text, JSON, PDF, and even image files. The text file functionality can be leveraged to manage notes, AI prompt templates, and query snippets for yourself and share across team members.

Saving a Query in the Catalog​

In Qarbine, navigate to your shared folder.

Select the folder, right click and choose the menu options highlighted below.

  

A catalog prompt appears

  

  

Enter a name and optional description.

  

Click

  

The item is added to the catalog.

  

At this point it is empty. You can double click the or on the right hand side click the    to edit the contents. A dialog is shown.

  

Copy the query from the Capella console and paste it into the Qarbine dialog.

  

Save the contents by clicking

  

Updating a Catalog Stored Query​

To update the item, first navigate to the component in the catalog.

If the description needs to be updated, change it in the right hand side.

  

Save your description changes by clicking

  

To edit the query text double click the tree item or on the right hand side click the   .

Paste the updated text into the text area.

Click

  

A confirmation dialog is shown

  

Click

  

Using Capella Query in Qarbine​

The queries authored in Capella can be used in Qarbine Data sources. Simply copy the query from Capella and paste it into the Qarbine Data Source Designer’s query specification text area.

Note- Qarbine release 1.3 does not recognized Couchbase’s use of /* … */” for comments. Those lines have to either be removed or updated to use Qarbine’s “//…” per line oriented comments.

Using Qarbine Queries in Capella​

The Qarbine Data Source queries can be used as Couchbase Capella queries. Simply copy the query specification from the Data Source Designer’s query specification text area and paste it into the Capella text area.

Note- Couchbase does not support Qarbine’s line oriented comment syntax of “//…”. These lines need to either be removed or updated to use Capella’s “/*... */” comment syntax.

Leveraging Capella’s Query Analytics​

The bottom portion of the Capella query page has options to review the query plan and other items. An example of the output is shown below.

  

This functionality can be used to review the performance characteristics of your Qarbine Data Source query specifications. It can also be used to debug any queries that seem to not be returning the answer sets you are expecting.