Managing Databases

CouchDB

The CHT has a range of CouchDB databases for storing different types of data. By default, databases all start with the prefix “medic”.

medic

The main database, used to store all contact and report data. Data access is protected by API to provide protection on a per document basis.

See Also: Database schema conventions

medic-sentinel

Stores the _local/sentinel-meta-data document which stores the sequence of the last processed change in the medic db. This is used so Sentinel can resume from where it left off and process all changes in order.

This database also stores metadata about the documents in the “medic” database, such as when it was received and which Sentinel transitions have executed on this doc. The UUID of the metadata doc is the same as the UUID of the “medic” doc with “-info” appended at the end.

For example:

{
  "_id": "f8cc78d0-31a7-44e8-8073-176adcc0dc7b-info",
  "_rev": "2-6e08756f62fa0595d87a3f50777758dc",
  "type": "info",
  "doc_id": "f8cc78d0-31a7-44e8-8073-176adcc0dc7b",
  "latest_replication_date": "2018-08-13T22:02:46.699Z",
  "initial_replication_date": "2018-08-14T10:02:13.625Z"
}

medic-logs

Stores a record of when a user last attempted to replicate and how many docs they have access to. This can be useful when trying to diagnose issues with users getting too much access, or being unable to complete replication because their access is too broad.

medic-vault

Stores CHT credentials for authenticating with third party services. These credentials are encrypted for safety, and can only be updated using the Credentials API.

medic-user-{username}-meta

Used for documents which are only relevant to a single user, including:

• “feedback”. Errors and exceptions caught in the browser, and user initiated feedback. Support staff must monitor these docs to detect any errors that are occurring on the client device.
• “read”. Records that a document has been opened in the browser so it can be marked as read in the UI.
• “telemetry”. Aggregate telemetry information for performance and usage metrics analysis.

  See Also: User telemetry

medic-users-meta

To make it easier to perform analysis of all the docs in each user’s “medic-user-{username}-meta” database, Sentinel replicates all the “feedback” and “telemetry” docs into this single database . This is used for reporting, monitoring, and usage analytics. The “feedback” and “telemetry” docs are deleted from the user’s “medic-user-{username}-meta” database after they have successfully been replicated to “medic-users-meta”.

Replication to this database can be enabled via configuration from 3.5.0 and works without configuration from 3.10.0.

_users

This is the standard CouchDB database used to configure user authentication and authorization.

medic-logs

Stores meta data about the user including when they last connected to the server, and how many documents they are allowed to replicate. This can be useful for checking for connection issues and misconfigured users.

PouchDB

Used to store documents on the client device to allow for Offline-First access. Bidirectional replication is done on the “medic” and “medic-user-{username}-meta” databases. The “medic” database is only partially replicated so the user stores only a subset of the entire CouchDB database for performance and security reasons.

See Also: CouchDB replication

PostgreSQL

Used to store data for performant analytical queries such as impact and monitoring dashboards. The CHT uses medic-couch2pg to handle replication of docs from “medic”, “medic-sentinel”, and “medic-users-meta” databases into Postgres.

See Also: Data Flows for Analytics