Since MongoDB 3.2 you can set intra-collection constrains, as described in this post.
However, what avour inter-collection constraints (such a the typical foreign key constrain in relational databases to ensure a linked document exists)? Has been something like that being included in recents versions of MongoDB? Is there any plan to do so?
Thanks!
I am unaware of any functionality like that in MongoDB server.
There is schema validation but it also applies only within one collection at a time.
If you use an ODM, some of this may be provided by the ODM. For example, Mongoid offers dependency constraints.
Related
I would like to create collection where only one entity should be stored.
Questions:
Is it possible to create restrictions for this collection on db level?
What are the best practices for CRUD application dealing with such collection?
You can use schema validation to be sure that new documents will respect your schema. This feature appears in 3.2, but was modified since 3.6 with use of JSON schema. Check the right doc version.
I'm trying to use mongoDB with Morphia but still I have a problem with deleting documents. Is there any additional plugin or wrapper which works with Mongo and provides something like transactions in DBMS?
No, there are no (multi document) transactions. There are two possible solutions:
You can restructure your data into a single document instead of spreading it over multiple tables. Thus MongoDB's single document transactions (if you call them that) are enough for you. You can solve many problems with embedded entities or arrays. You might want to start a question related to "schema" design, if you're unsure how to approach this.
Your problem absolutely needs transactions across multiple documents / tables. Then MongoDB is simply not the right tool and you should use a relational database.
Don't fight the tool, pick the right one...
In a system I'm building, it's essentially an issue tracking system, but with various issue templates. Some issue types will have different formats that others.
I was originally planning on using MySQL with a main issues table and an issues_meta table that contains key => value pairs. However, I'm thinking NoSQL (MongoDB) might be the better option.
Can MongoDB provide me with the ability to generate "standard"
reports, like # of issues by type, # of issues by type by month, # of
issues assigned per person, etc? I ask this because I've read a few
sources that said Mongo was bad at reporting.
I'm also planning on storing my audit logs in Mongo, since I want a single "table" for all actions (Modifications to any table). In Mongo I can store each field that was changed easily, since it is schemaless. Is this a bad idea?
Anything else I should know, and will Mongo work for what I want?
I think MongoDB will be a perfect match for that use case.
MongoDB collections are heterogeneous, meaning you can store documents with different fields in the same bag. So different reporting templates won't be a show stopper. You will be able to model a full issue with a single document.
MongoDB would be a good fit for logging too. You may be interested in capped collections.
Should you need to have relational association between documents, you can do have it too.
If you are using Ruby, I can recommend you Mongoid. It will make it easier. Also, it has support for versioning of documents.
MongoDB will definitely work (and you can use capped collections to automatically drop old records, if you want), but you should ask yourself, does it fit to this task well? For use case you've described it is better option to use Redis (simple and fast enough) or Riak (if you care a lot about your log data).
What are the options for MongoDB schema migrations/upgrades?
We (my colleagues and I) have a somewhat large (~100 million record) MongoDB collection. This collection is mapped (ORM'd) to a Scala lift-mongodb object that has been through a number of different iterations. We've got all sorts of code in there which handles missing fields, renames, removals, migrations, etc.
As much as the whole "schema-less" thing can be nice and flexible, in this case it's causing a lot of code clutter as our object continues to evolve. Continuing down this "flexible object" path is simply not sustainable.
How have you guys implemented schema migrations/upgrades in MongoDB with Scala? Does a framework for this exist? I know that Foursquare uses Scala with MongoDB and Rogue (their own query DSL)... does anyone know how they handle their migrations?
Thank you.
Perhaps this can help somewhat, this is how Guardian.co.uk handle this:
http://qconlondon.com/dl/qcon-london-2011/slides/MatthewWall_WhyIChoseMongoDBForGuardianCoUk.pdf
Schema upgrades
This can be mitigated by:
Adding a “version” key to each document
Updating the version each time the application modifies a document
Using MapReduce capability to forcibly migrate documents from older versions if required
I program migrations of MongoDB data with my own Scala framework "Subset". It lets define document fields pretty easily, fine tune data serialization (e.g. write "date" is a specific format and so on) and build queries and update modifiers in terms of the defined fields. This "gist" gives a good introduction
Before I dive really deep into MongoDB for days, I thought I'd ask a pretty basic question as to whether I should dive into it at all or not. I have basically no experience with nosql.
I did read a little about some of the benefits of document databases, and I think for this new application, they will be really great. It is always a hassle to do favourites, comments, etc. for many types of objects (lots of m-to-m relationships) and subclasses - it's kind of a pain to deal with.
I also have a structure that will be a pain to define in SQL because it's extremely nested and translates to a document a lot better than 15 different tables.
But I am confused about a few things.
Is it desirable to keep your database normalized still? I really don't want to be updating multiple records. Is that still how people approach the design of the database in MongoDB?
What happens when a user favourites a book and this selection is still stored in a user document, but then the book is deleted? How does the relationship get detached without foreign keys? Am I manually responsible for deleting all of the links myself?
What happens if a user favourited a book that no longer exists and I query it (some kind of join)? Do I have to do any fault-tolerance here?
MongoDB doesn't support server side foreign key relationships, normalization is also discouraged. You should embed your child object within parent objects if possible, this will increase performance and make foreign keys totally unnecessary. That said it is not always possible, so there is a special construct called DBRef which allows to reference objects in a different collection. This may be then not so speedy because DB has to make additional queries to read objects but allows for kind of foreign key reference.
Still you will have to handle your references manually. Only while looking up your DBRef you will see if it exists, the DB will not go through all the documents to look for the references and remove them if the target of the reference doesn't exist any more. But I think removing all the references after deleting the book would require a single query per collection, no more, so not that difficult really.
If your schema is more complex then probably you should choose a relational database and not nosql.
There is also a book about designing MongoDB databases: Document Design for MongoDB
UPDATE The book above is not available anymore, yet because of popularity of MongoDB there are quite a lot of others. I won't link them all, since such links are likely to change, a simple search on Amazon shows multiple pages so it shouldn't be a problem to find some.
See the MongoDB manual page for 'Manual references' and DBRefs for further specifics and examples
Above, #TomaaszStanczak states
MongoDB doesn't support server side foreign key relationships,
normalization is also discouraged. You should embed your child object
within parent objects if possible, this will increase performance and
make foreign keys totally unnecessary. That said it is not always
possible ...
Normalization is not discouraged by Mongo. To be clear, we are talking about two fundamentally different types of relationships two data entities can have. In one, one child entity is owned exclusively by a parent object. In this type of relationship the Mongo way is to embed.
In the other class of relationship two entities exist independently - have independent lifetimes and relationships. Mongo wishes that this type of relationship did not exist, and is frustratingly silent on precisely how to deal with it. Embedding is just not a solution. Normalization is not discouraged, or encouraged. Mongo just gives you two mechanisms to deal with it; Manual refs (analoguous to a key with the foreign key constraint binding two tables), and DBRef (a different, slightly more structured way of doing the same). In this use case SQL databases win.
The answers of both Tomasz and Francis contain good advice: that "normalization" is not discouraged by Mongo, but that you should first consider optimizing your database document design before creating "document references". DBRefs were mentioned by Tomasz, however as he alluded, are not a "magic bullet" and require additional processing to be useful.
What is now possible, as of MongoDB version 3.2, is to produce results equivalent to an SQL JOIN by using the $lookup aggregation pipeline stage operator. In this manner you can have a "normalized" document structure, but still be able to produce consolidated results. In order for this to work you need to create a unique key in the target collection that is hopefully both meaningful and unique. You can enforce uniqueness by creating a unique index on this field.
$lookup usage is pretty straightforward. Have a look at the documentation here: https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/reference/operator/aggregation/lookup/#lookup-aggregation. Run the aggregate() method on the source collection (i.e. the "left" table). The from parameter is the target collection (i.e. the "right" table). The localField parameter would be the field in the source collection (i.e. the "foreign key"). The foreignField parameter would be the matching field in the target collection.
As far as orphaned documents, from your question I would presume you are thinking about a traditional RDBMS set of constraints, cascading deletes, etc. Again, as of MongoDB version 3.2, there is native support for document validation. Have a look at this StackOver article: How to apply constraints in MongoDB? Look at the second answer, from JohnnyHK
Packt Publishers have a bunch of good books on MongoDB. (Full Disclosure: I wrote a couple of them.)