Compaction

Compaction is the process of reclaiming disk space and reducing fragmentation. Compaction is performed on buckets as well as on views. Whenever a client deletes documents from a Couchbase bucket, it creates gaps within the data file. If there is no reclamation of this gap, then the size of the data file will increase and it might have an impact on its performance, as Couchbase needs to handle a large file instead of a smaller, compact data file while performing any operation on it. Couchbase works on the principle of append-only storage engine features. Whenever there are data operations taking place in the bucket—whether it's a write, update, or delete operation—the mutated document always goes at the end of the data file only. There might be a lot of gaps between data files if there are lots of deletions occurred. Although this sequential update might improve disk writes, it will have a severe impact if a timely reclamation of the gap is not done. In order to manage the data...