Exploring databases: MongoDB

What Is a Database?

A database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system. A database is usually controlled by a database management system (DBMS). Together, the data and the DBMS, along with the applications that are associated with them, are referred to as a database system, often shortened to just database.

Data within the most common types of databases in operation today is typically modeled in rows and columns in a series of tables to make processing and data querying efficient. The data can then be easily accessed, managed, modified, updated, controlled, and organized. Most databases use structured query language (SQL) for writing and querying data.

Types of Databases

There are various types of databases used for storing different varieties of data:

Types of databases

Difference between SQL and NoSQL databases

difference table

What is MongoDB?

MongoDB is a document-oriented NoSQL database used for high volume data storage. Instead of using tables and rows as in the traditional relational databases, MongoDB makes use of collections and documents. Documents consist of key-value pairs which are the basic unit of data in MongoDB. Collections contain sets of documents and function which is the equivalent of relational database tables. MongoDB is a database which came into light around the mid-2000s.

Why Use MongoDB?

MongoDB is a document database built on a scale-out architecture that has become popular with developers of all kinds who are building scalable applications using agile methodologies.

MongoDB was built for people who are building internet and business applications who need to evolve quickly and scale elegantly. If you are doing that, you should consider MongoDB.

Companies and development teams of all sizes use MongoDB because:

• The document data model is a powerful way to store and retrieve data that allows developers to move fast.
• MongoDB’s horizontal, scale-out architecture can support huge volumes of both data and traffic.

MongoDB has a great user experience for developers who can install MongoDB and start writing code immediately.

• MongoDB can be used everywhere by anyone:
• For free through the open source community edition
• In the largest data centers through the enterprise edition
• In any of the major public clouds through MongoDB Atlas

MongoDB has developed a large and mature platform ecosystem, which means:

• MongoDB has a worldwide community of developers and consultants, so it is easy to get help.
• MongoDB works on all types of computing platforms, both on-premise and in the cloud (both private, and public clouds such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud)
• MongoDB can be used from all major languages.
• MongoDB can be accessed from all major ETL and data management systems.
• MongoDB has enterprise-grade support.

MongoDB Features

1. Each database contains collections which in turn contains documents. Each document can be different with a varying number of fields. The size and content of each document can be different from each other.
2. The document structure is more in line with how developers construct their classes and objects in their respective programming languages. Developers will often say that their classes are not rows and columns but have a clear structure with key-value pairs.
3. The rows (or documents as called in MongoDB) doesn’t need to have a schema defined beforehand. Instead, the fields can be created on the fly.
4. The data model available within MongoDB allows you to represent hierarchical relationships, to store arrays, and other more complex structures more easily.
5. Scalability — The MongoDB environments are very scalable. Companies across the world have defined clusters with some of them running 100+ nodes with around millions of documents within the database

Top MongoDB Usage

1. Mobility and Scaling

MongoDB is very scalable and flexible, which gives fantastic database solutions to deal with different kinds of environments. The schemas of MongoDB will evolve over time, and in this way, mobile application developers can focus their time on developing better customer experience. This will help many companies to deal with varying structures of data that are coming from many different sources in the mobile application development world.

2. Real-Time Data Integration

There is a lot of value to data if it is consolidated and aggregated into one single view, and MongoDB plays a vital role in doing that. Due to the query capabilities and flexibility of MongoDB, now it is easier to aggregate data and create those tools which will make an organization more efficient.

With the help of MongoDB, one can see aggregated data in a single view in real-time, which provides massive value to the companies. A developer can also take quick action on specific events and also monitor with the help of MongoDB 3.6.

3. Product Catalog

There are many attributes to products which are easily stored as an object using MongoDB and can be used to understand the customer better in the digital experience. Nowadays, the quality and volume of data are increasing and are being used to improve the interaction in product catalogs of customers. MongoDB has dynamic schema capability, which helps in bringing relevancy between attributes and product documents. It will provide a better experience for both customers and developers

Some Real-World Companies That Use MongoDB

1. eBay

eBay is a multinational company that provides a platform for the customer to customer sales. It is currently running a large number of projects in MongoDB like merchandising categorization, cloud management, metadata storage, search suggestions.

2. MetLife

MetLife is a leading company in employee benefit programs, annuities, and insurance. There are more than 90 million customers in the Middle East, Europe, Aisa, Latin America, Japan, United States. MetLife is using MongoDB for its advanced customer service application called The Wall.

This application provides a combined view of transactions, policy details, and other details of MetLife Customers. It looks like Wall of Facebook, which takes data from 70 legacy systems and merges it into a single record. It stores 24 Terabytes of data and runs across six servers in two data centers. MetLife is working on a series of Big Data projects where MongoDB-based applications are part of it.

3. Aadhar

It is India’s Unique Identification project, which has the biggest biometrics database in the world. Aadhar Project is using MongoDB as its database to store a massive amount of demographic and biometric data of more than 1.2 billion Indians. MongoDB is being used for the storage of images in the Aadhar project.