couchbase/forestdb

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

1333 stars · 178 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

ForestDB is an embedded key-value storage engine written in C/C++ by Couchbase, using a Hierarchical B+-Tree based Trie (HB+-Trie) as its main index structure. It provides MVCC, snapshots, transactions, WAL, and compaction, and was used in Couchbase Server and Couchbase Lite.

Use cases

• embed a fast key-value storage engine in a C/C++ application
• store binary keys and values with custom key ordering
• build a local database with MVCC and snapshot support
• run a storage engine on mobile devices like iOS and Android
• benchmark alternative key-value storage engines
• implement transactional local persistence with rollback support

When to choose

• you need an embedded, linkable key-value store in C or C++
• your workload has long or binary keys where trie-based indexing outperforms B+-Tree engines
• you need MVCC, snapshots, and ranged iteration in a local store
• you target cross-platform deployment including mobile OSes

When to avoid

• you need an actively developed engine with ongoing community support
• you want a client-server database rather than an embedded library
• your project depends on Couchbase Server 6.0+ where ForestDB was superseded
• you prefer higher-level language bindings or managed storage

Facets

library · maturity maintenance

database caching serialization databases developer-tools mobile-development windows cpp c key-value-store storage-engine b-plus-tree mvcc append-only embedded-database write-ahead-logging linux macos android ios

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