I have a very large couchDB database that I host on Cloudant. One of the early noob mistakes I made was keep all my views under one design document. When I made a change to the design document by adding a new view, it would compile the design document again and make the database unavailable for a while.

After I talked to Cloudant, they told me it's good practice to have multiple design documents, and after doing some reading, it looks like CouchDB runs one view server per design document.

Now as in true startup fashion, we are constantly adding new features and hence new updates to the database (which is in production). Whenever I want to add a new view, I make a new design document and add the view to it.

With that background two questions.

1. Is this the right approach?
2. What naming scheme should my design documents follow?