Last Friday, RavenDB 4.1 hit the RTM milestone and then went out to see what other interesting things it can do. The highlights include:

1. Cluster wide transactions
2. JavaScript indexes
3. SQL Migration Wizard
4. Distributed Counters
5. RavenDB Embedded
6. MongoDB & CosmosDB migration

The Inside RavenDB book is also complete and is now available at Amazon. This ended up being 562 pages of deep dive into everything that RavenDB does, how it does it and most importantly, why it is doing so. Not willing to just give you the raw details, I tried to tell both the story of RavenDB and place it in context, so you’ll understand how to actually make the best use of the database. This has been almost a year and a half in the making. I’m really glad that I wrote the book, because the mere fact that I had to present a coherent story for the book was very helpful for the product itself. Of course, that meant that I had to go and re-write a bunch of stuff, but the end result is both a better product and a better book.

The book is available in both paper back formats and on Kindle (and Kindle Unlimited). I would really appreciate any feedback you have. The actual first copy are currently in the mail (currently residing in Weybridge, Surrey GB) and I can’t wait to actually hold them in my hands.

In other news, we are nearing public availability of 4.1 in RavenHQ as well. RavenHQ is currently in the middle of their private beta for RavenDB 4. Along with supporting v4.1, RavenHQ is revamping it's hosting model to offer features such as hosting multiple databases per subscription and the ability to create a cluster in the region of your choice. RavenHQ will be opening up it's V4.1 clusters to the public within the next few weeks, but the private beta is currently offering clusters for free! If you’d like to participate in the private beta, fill out their survey to get an invitation.

The hosting model revamp sounds small, but it has huge implications on all sort of details that you have to get right when you operate at the scale that RavenHQ does. In particular, whereas the 3.5 offering for RavenHQ is for a single (replicated) database, the RavenDB 4.1 offering is actually a full fledged cluster. This give you the ability to manage your own databases, designate production / test / dev environments, automatically create databases, etc. RavenHQ is still going to operate and manage everything for you, but you will now have far more freedom.