New in 3.1

New support for Scopes and Collections
Couchbase has introduced support for Scopes and Collections for self-managed cloud-to-edge deployments only in Couchbase Lite 3.1.0 and Sync Gateway 3.1.0. This release won’t cause any issues with existing apps, as it’s compatible with older versions. If you have an app that uses bucket-based APIs, you can still upgrade to 3.1, but please note that this API is now deprecated. For more information, see Scopes and Collections Configuration for Sync Gateway.

Improved Data Organization and Access Control for Scopes and Collections
Couchbase Mobile now offers Scopes and Collections, allowing more efficient and scalable data organisation within a bucket. This also introduces an improved method of defining and enforcing data Access Control more granularly. Multi-tenant apps will also experience better scalability and independent data lifecycle management.

Improved metadata isolation for Scopes and Collections
Sync Gateway 3.1.0 has improved metadata isolation. The system data maintained by Sync Gateway is now stored in the _default Scope/Collection, while both the _default and user-defined Scope/Collection can be used for application data. For more information, examples and use cases, see Scopes and Collections Support in Couchbase Mobile for Edge Applications.

Collection-Level Sync Functions and Scoped User Associations
The Sync Functions now work on a Collection level, and additional optional fields have been added to the database configurations to support this update. Each database is designed to support only one Scope. Users can be associated with that Scope and shared across multiple Collections.

Enhanced Collection Synchronization and Local Data Storage with Couchbase Lite Client
With Couchbase Lite client replications, you can synchronize one or multiple Collections within a specific scope. The Couchbase Lite client also will store data locally in a scope not synchronized with the remote Sync Gateway.