Since MongoDB is schemaless, I could just drop all my documents into a single collection, with a key collection and an index on that key.
For example this:
db.getCollection('dogs').find()
db.getCollection('cars').find()
Would become this:
db.getCollection('all').find({'collection': 'dogs'})
db.getCollection('all').find({'collection': 'cars'})
Is there any technical downside to doing this?
There are multiple reasons to have different collections, maybe the two most importants are:
Performance: even if MongoDB has been designed to be flexible, it doesn't prevent the need to have indexes on fields that will be used during the search. You would have dramatic response times if the collection is too heterogeneous.
Maintenability/evolutivity: design should be driven by the usecases (usually you'll store the data as it's received by the application) and the design should be explicit to anyone looking at the database collections
MongoDB University is a great e-learning platform, it is free and there is in particular this course:
M320: Data Modeling
schema questions are often better understood by working backwards from the queries you'll rely on and how the data will get written.... if you were going to query Field1 AND Field2 together in 1 query statement you do want them in the same collection....dogs and cars don't sound very related while dogs and cats do...so really look at how you're going to want to query.....joining collections is not really ideal - doable via $lookup but not ideal....
What are comparable database like Mongo DB?
We are trying to evaluate Mongo DB and find the best database for a enterprise level application.
Is there any developer UI and admin UI available for MongoDB like SQL Plus/Toad etc for Oracle?
MongoDB is a document-oriented database, so instead of a row of data, you have a document. In MonogDB's case, its a JSON document. Apache's CouchDB is another document database that stores data in JSON format although there are subtle differences between the two.
Choosing between the two depends on your use case. Sometimes CouchDB is better than MongoDB.
Checkout this comparative to see the differences.
MongoDB is what is known as a NoSQL database, which is I assume why you're interested in it. You can find a list of other NoSQL databases at the below links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoSQL
http://nosql-database.org/
MongoDB does not include a GUI-style administrative interface; however, there are numerous community projects that provide admin UIs for MongoDB:
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Admin+UIs
I like document oriented databases like MongoDB very much. Because they are shema-less. You can just insert find and update your records without first having to define a schema. But you can define one in your own Project logic. You have more freedom.
It would be nice to have an embeddable NoSQL database. Like SQLite but document oriented.
Currently I do develop one in Java. (You can also use it withhin an Android App):
https://github.com/neo-expert/thingdb
I am quite happy with MongoVue. I've made a couple of videos about this here.
Q1. Why do people often prefer to use NoSQL over RDBMS for storing data like tweets?
Q2. Is there any NoSQL database that supports a SQL-like query syntax?
A sample table for the Q1 would be:
Status
UID
Status
Timestamp
Q1:
NoSQL products are primarily known for their ability to scale (sharding and replication) and their schema-less design. Twitter uses FlockDB (a graph DB) and not an RDBMS because of that, and because it makes more sense to use graphs to describe who follows who - not because the actual text messages.
Other benefits of NoSQL include advanced querying techniques (Map/Reduce): CouchDB and RavenDB are document-oriented DBs built on top of Lucene, and therefore can offer full-text search queries out-of-the-box, something you could never do efficiently with RDBMS.
Q2:
RavenDB queries are Linq expressions, which mimics SQL syntax, and is quite identical to it.
NoSQL databases, especially MongoDB, are often a good choice for storing things like tweets because they offer very quick write speeds, fast querying, and can easily distribute large data sets across a cluster of servers.
Many NoSQL databases have their own query syntax, but some such as Hive, a data warehouse product built on top of Hadoop, do have SQL-like query languages.
For unstructured data, or for data
whose structure is dynamic (i.e. if
stored in a RDBMS, the table
structure will continually be
changed). Imagine storing data about, say films, in a database. You start off with title and director, but before long you realise you also need to save all the actors/actresses, the year --> table structure change. You then want to store similar films --> another change. For such a scenario saving data in key/value pairs may well be easier, as you simply add the new data into the existing structure (though the example you give - basically a BLOB of text - doesn't really fit that description).
Orient supports SQL-similar syntax
I have an MSSQL database which I am considering porting to CouchDB or MongoDB. I have a many-to-many relationship within the SQL db which has hundreds of thousands rows in the xref table, corresponding to tens of thousands of rows in the tables on each side of the relationship. Will CouchDB and/or MongoDB be able to handle this data, and what would be the best way of formatting the relevant documents for performant querying? Thanks very much.
For CouchDB, I would highly recommend reading this article about Entity Relationships.
One thing I would note in CouchDB is to be careful of attempting to "normalize" a non-relational data model. The document-based storage offers you a great deal of flexibility, and it's seldom the best idea to abstract everything into as many "document types" as you can think of. Many times, it's best to leave much of your data within the same document unless you have clear cases where separate entities exist.
One common use-case of many-to-many relationships is implementing tagging. There are articles about different methods you can use to accomplish this in CouchDB. It may apply to your requirements, it may not, but it's probably worth a read.
Since the 'collection' model of MongoDB is similar to tables you can of course maintain
the m:n relationship inside a dedicated mapping collection (using the _id of the related documents of the referenced documents from other collections).
If you can: consider redesign your application using embedded documents.
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Schema+Design
In general: try to turn off your memories to a RDBMS when working with MongoDB.
Blindly copying the database design from RDBMS to MongoDB is neither helpful nor adviceable nor will it work in general.
I'm used to using relational databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL, and combined with MVC frameworks such as Symfony, RoR or Django, and I think it works great.
But lately I've heard a lot about MongoDB which is a non-relational database, or, to quote the official definition,
a scalable, high-performance, open
source, schema-free, document-oriented
database.
I'm really interested in being on edge and want to be aware of all the options I'll have for a next project and choose the best technologies out there.
In which cases using MongoDB (or similar databases) is better than using a "classic" relational databases?
And what are the advantages of MongoDB vs MySQL in general?
Or at least, why is it so different?
If you have pointers to documentation and/or examples, it would be of great help too.
Here are some of the advantages of MongoDB for building web applications:
A document-based data model. The basic unit of storage is analogous to JSON, Python dictionaries, Ruby hashes, etc. This is a rich data structure capable of holding arrays and other documents. This means you can often represent in a single entity a construct that would require several tables to properly represent in a relational db. This is especially useful if your data is immutable.
Deep query-ability. MongoDB supports dynamic queries on documents using a document-based query language that's nearly as powerful as SQL.
No schema migrations. Since MongoDB is schema-free, your code defines your schema.
A clear path to horizontal scalability.
You'll need to read more about it and play with it to get a better idea. Here's an online demo:
http://try.mongodb.org/
There are numerous advantages.
For instance your database schema will be more scalable, you won't have to worry about migrations, the code will be more pleasant to write... For instance here's one of my model's code :
class Setting
include MongoMapper::Document
key :news_search, String, :required => true
key :is_availaible_for_iphone, :required => true, :default => false
belongs_to :movie
end
Adding a key is just adding a line of code !
There are also other advantages that will appear in the long run, like a better scallability and speed.
... But keep in mind that a non-relational database is not better than a relational one. If your database has a lot of relations and normalization, it might make little sense to use something like MongoDB. It's all about finding the right tool for the job.
For more things to read I'd recommend taking a look at "Why I think Mongo is to Databases what Rails was to Frameworks" or this post on the mongodb website. To get excited and if you speak french, take a look at this article explaining how to set up MongoDB from scratch.
Edit: I almost forgot to tell you about this railscast by Ryan. It's very interesting and makes you want to start right away!
The advantage of schema-free is that you can dump whatever your load is in it, and no one will ever have any ground for complaining about it, or for saying that it was wrong.
It also means that whatever you dump in it, remains totally void of meaning after you have done so.
Some would label that a gross disadvantage, some others won't.
The fact that a relational database has a well-established schema, is a consequence of the fact that it has a well-established set of extensional predicates, which are what allows us to attach meaning to what is recorded in the database, and which are also a necessary prerequisite for us to do so.
Without a well-established schema, no extensional predicates, and without extensional precicates, no way for the user to make any meaning out of what was stuffed in it.
My experience with Postgres and Mongo after working with both the databases in my projects .
Postgres(RDBMS)
Postgres is recommended if your future applications have a complicated schema that needs lots of joins or all the data have relations or if we have heavy writing. Postgres is open source, faster, ACID compliant and uses less memory on disk, and is all around good performant for JSON storage also and includes full serializability of transactions with 3 levels of transaction isolation.
The biggest advantage of staying with Postgres is that we have best of both worlds. We can store data into JSONB with constraints, consistency and speed. On the other hand, we can use all SQL features for other types of data. The underlying engine is very stable and copes well with a good range of data volumes. It also runs on your choice of hardware and operating system. Postgres providing NoSQL capabilities along with full transaction support, storing JSON documents with constraints on the fields data.
General Constraints for Postgres
Scaling Postgres Horizontally is significantly harder, but doable.
Fast read operations cannot be fully achieved with Postgres.
NO SQL Data Bases
Mongo DB (Wired Tiger)
MongoDB may beat Postgres in dimension of “horizontal scale”. Storing JSON is what Mongo is optimized to do. Mongo stores its data in a binary format called BSONb which is (roughly) just a binary representation of a superset of JSON. MongoDB stores objects exactly as they were designed. According to MongoDB, for write-intensive applications, Mongo says the new engine(Wired Tiger) gives users an up to 10x increase in write performance(I should try this), with 80 percent reduction in storage utilization, helping to lower costs of storage, achieve greater utilization of hardware.
General Constraints of MongoDb
The usage of a schema less storage engine leads to the problem of implicit schemas. These schemas aren’t defined by our storage engine but instead are defined based on application behavior and expectations.
Stand-alone NoSQL technologies do not meet ACID standards because they sacrifice critical data protections in favor of high throughput performance for unstructured applications. It’s not hard to apply ACID on NoSQL databases but it would make database slow and inflexible up to some extent. “Most of the NoSQL limitations were optimized in the newer versions and releases which have overcome its previous limitations up to a great extent”.
It's all about trade offs. MongoDB is fast but not ACID, it has no transactions. It is better than MySQL in some use cases and worse in others.
Bellow Lines Written in MongoDB: The Definitive Guide.
There are several good reasons:
Keeping different kinds of documents in the same collection can be a
nightmare for developers and admins. Developers need to make sure
that each query is only returning documents of a certain kind or
that the application code performing a query can handle documents of
different shapes. If we’re querying for blog posts, it’s a hassle to
weed out documents containing author data.
It is much faster to get a list of collections than to extract a
list of the types in a collection. For example, if we had a type key
in the collection that said whether each document was a “skim,”
“whole,” or “chunky monkey” document, it would be much slower to
find those three values in a single collection than to have three
separate collections and query for their names
Grouping documents of the same kind together in the same collection
allows for data locality. Getting several blog posts from a
collection containing only posts will likely require fewer disk
seeks than getting the same posts from a collection con- taining
posts and author data.
We begin to impose some structure on our documents when we create
indexes. (This is especially true in the case of unique indexes.)
These indexes are defined per collection. By putting only documents
of a single type into the same collection, we can index our
collections more efficiently
After a question of databases with textual storage), I glanced at MongoDB and similar systems.
If I understood correctly, they are supposed to be easier to use and setup, and much faster. Perhaps also more secure as the lack of SQL prevents SQL injection...
Apparently, MongoDB is used mostly for Web applications.
Basically, and they state that themselves, these databases aren't suited for complex queries, data-mining, etc. But they shine at retrieving quickly lot of flat data.
MongoDB supports search by fields, regular expression searches.Includes user defined java script functions.
MongoDB can be used as a file system, taking advantage of load balancing and data replication features over multiple machines for storing files.