What is MongoDB?

MongoDB is an open-source, cross-platform, and distributed document-based database designed for ease of application development and scaling. It is a NoSQL database developed by MongoDB Inc.

MongoDB name is derived from the word “Humongous” which means huge, enormous. MongoDB database is built to store a huge amount of data and also perform fast.

MongoDB is not a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). It’s called a “NoSQL” database. It is opposite to SQL based databases where it does not normalize data under schemas and tables where every table has a fixed structure. Instead, it stores data in the collections as JSON based documents and does not enforce schemas. It does not have tables, rows, and columns as other SQL (RDBMS) databases.

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.
   

   Why Use MongoDB?

   Below are the few of the reasons as to why one should start using MongoDB

   1. Document-oriented – Since MongoDB is a NoSQL type database, instead of having data in a relational type format, it stores the data in documents. This makes MongoDB very flexible and adaptable to real business world situation and requirements.
   2. Ad hoc queries – MongoDB supports searching by field, range queries, and regular expression searches. Queries can be made to return specific fields within documents.
   3. Indexing – Indexes can be created to improve the performance of searches within MongoDB. Any field in a MongoDB document can be indexed.
   4. Replication – MongoDB can provide high availability with replica sets. A replica set consists of two or more mongo DB instances. Each replica set member may act in the role of the primary or secondary replica at any time. The primary replica is the main server which interacts with the client and performs all the read/write operations. The Secondary replicas maintain a copy of the data of the primary using built-in replication. When a primary replica fails, the replica set automatically switches over to the secondary and then it becomes the primary server.

Load balancing – MongoDB uses the concept of sharding to scale horizontally by splitting data across multiple MongoDB instances. MongoDB can run over multiple servers, balancing the load and/or duplicating data to keep the system up and running in case of hardware failure.

Data Modelling in MongoDB

As we have seen from the Introduction section, the data in MongoDB has a flexible schema. Unlike in SQL databases, where you must have a table’s schema declared before inserting data, MongoDB’s collections do not enforce document structure. This sort of flexibility is what makes MongoDB so powerful.

When modeling data in Mongo, keep the following things in mind

1. 1. 1. What are the needs of the application – Look at the business needs of the application and see what data and the type of data needed for the application. Based on this, ensure that the structure of the document is decided accordingly.
      2. What are data retrieval patterns – If you foresee a heavy query usage then consider the use of indexes in your data model to improve the efficiency of queries.

Are frequent inserts, updates and removals happening in the database? Reconsider the use of indexes or incorporate sharding if required in your data modeling design to improve the efficiency of your overall MongoDB environment.

Advantages of MongoDB

1. 1. 1. 1. MongoDB stores data as JSON based document that does not enforce the schema. It allows us to store hierarchical data in a document. This makes it easy to store and retrieve data in an efficient manner.
         2. It is easy to scale up or down as per the requirement since it is a document based database. MongoDB also allows us to split data across multiple servers.
         3. MongoDB provides rich features like indexing, aggregation, file store, etc.
         4. MongoDB performs fast with huge data.
         5. MongoDB provides drivers to store and fetch data from different applications developed in different technologies such as C#, Java, Python, Node.js, etc.
         6. MongoDB provides tools to manage MongoDB databases.