I have user collection which holds email_id and _id as unique. I want to store user data across various collections. I would like to use email_id as identifier in those collections. Because it is easy to query in the shell against those collections with email_id instead of complex ObjectId.
Is this right way? will it give any performance problem while creating indexes with big emailIds?
Also, don't consider this option, If you have plan to enable email_id change
option in future.
While relational databases encourage you to normalize your data and spread it over many tables, this approach is usually not the best for MongoDB. MongoDB doesn't support JOINs over multiple collections or even multiple documents from the same collection. So you should try to design your database documents in a way that each query can be statisfied by searching for a single document. That means it is usually a good idea to store all information about a user in one document.
An exception for this is when certain points of data of the user grows indefinitely (like the posts made by a user in a forum). First, MongoDB documents have a size limit and second, when the size of a document increases, the database needs to reallocate its hard drive space frequently. This slows down writes and leads to fragmentation in the database. In that case it's better to put each entity in a different collection.
The size of the fields covered by an index don't matter when you search for equality. When you have an unique index on email_id, it should be just as fast as searching by _id.
Related
What are the downsides of storing completely different documents on the same collection of MongoDB?
Unlike others questions, the documents I'm referring to are not related (like parent-child).
The motivator here is cost-reduction. Azure CosmosDB Mongo API charges and scalability are per-collection.
The size of the collection will get a lot bigger a lot faster.
Speed of queries could be impacted as you'll have to scan more documents than required (could maybe use sparse indexes)
Index sizes will be a lot bigger and longer to scan
You'll need to store a discriminator with the documents so you can tell what type one document is compared to another.
If the documents are not related at all, I'd store them in completely separate collections.
So just a quick best practice question here. How do I know when I should create new collections in MongoDB?
I have an app that queries TV show data. Should each show have its own collection, or should they all be store within one collection with relevant data in the same document. Please explain why you chose the approach you did. (I'm still very new to MongoDB. I'm used to MySql.)
The Two Most Popular Approaches to Schema Design in MongoDB
Embed data into documents and store them in a single collection.
Normalize data across multiple collections.
Embedding Data
There are several reasons why MongoDB doesn't support joins across collections, and I won't get into all of them here. But the main reason why we don't need joins is because we can embed relevant data into a single hierarchical JSON document. We can think of it as pre-joining the data before we store it. In the relational database world, this amounts to denormalizing our data. In MongoDB, this is about the most routine thing we can do.
Normalizing Data
Even though MongoDB doesn't support joins, we can still store related data across multiple collections and still get to it all, albeit in a round about way. This requires us to store a reference to a key from one collection inside another collection. It sounds similar to relational databases, but MongoDB doesn't enforce any of key constraints for us like most relational databases do. Enforcing key constraints is left entirely up to us. We're good enough to manage it though, right?
Accessing all related data in this way means we're required to make at least one query for every collection the data is stored across. It's up to each of us to decide if we can live with that.
When to Embed Data
Embed data when that embedded data will be accessed at the same time as the rest of the document. Pre-joining data that is frequently used together reduces the amount of code we have to write to query across multiple collections. It also reduces the number of round trips to the server.
Embed data when that embedded data only pertains to that single document. Like most rules, we need to give this some thought before blindly following it. If we're storing an address for a user, we don't need to create a separate collection to store addresses just because the user might have a roommate with the same address. Remember, we're not normalizing here, so duplicating data to some degree is ok.
Embed data when you need "transaction-like" writes. Prior to v4.0, MongoDB did not support transactions, though it does guarantee that a single document write is atomic. It'll write the document or it won't. Writes across multiple collections could not be made atomic, and update anomalies could occur for how many ever number of scenarios we can imagine. This is no longer the case since v4.0, however it is still more typical to denormalize data to avoid the need for transactions.
When to Normalize Data
Normalize data when data that applies to many documents changes frequently. So here we're talking about "one to many" relationships. If we have a large number of documents that have a city field with the value "New York" and all of a sudden the city of New York decides to change its name to "New-New York", well then we have to update a lot of documents. Got anomalies? In cases like this where we suspect other cities will follow suit and change their name, then we'd be better off creating a cities collection containing a single document for each city.
Normalize data when data grows frequently. When documents grow, they have to be moved on disk. If we're embedding data that frequently grows beyond its allotted space, that document will have to be moved often. Since these documents are bigger each time they're moved, the process only grows more complex and won't get any better over time. By normalizing those embedded parts that grow frequently, we eliminate the need for the entire document to be moved.
Normalize data when the document is expected to grow larger than 16MB. Documents have a 16MB limit in MongoDB. That's just the way things are. We should start breaking them up into multiple collections if we ever approach that limit.
The Most Important Consideration to Schema Design in MongoDB is...
How our applications access and use data. This requires us to think? Uhg! What data is used together? What data is used mostly as read-only? What data is written to frequently? Let your applications data access patterns drive your schema, not the other way around.
The scope you've described is definitely not too much for "one collection". In fact, being able to store everything in a single place is the whole point of a MongoDB collection.
For the most part, you don't want to be thinking about querying across combined tables as you would in SQL. Unlike in SQL, MongoDB lets you avoid thinking in terms of "JOINs"--in fact MongoDB doesn't even support them natively.
See this slideshare:
http://www.slideshare.net/mongodb/migrating-from-rdbms-to-mongodb?related=1
Specifically look at slides 24 onward. Note how a MongoDB schema is meant to replace the multi-table schemas customary to SQL and RDBMS.
In MongoDB a single document holds all information regarding a record. All records are stored in a single collection.
Also see this question:
MongoDB query multiple collections at once
I'm logging different actions users make on our website. Each action can be of different type : a comment, a search query, a page view, a vote etc... Each of these types has its own schema and common infos. For instance :
comment : {"_id":(mongoId), "type":"comment", "date":4/7/2012,
"user":"Franck", "text":"This is a sample comment"}
search : {"_id":(mongoId), "type":"search", "date":4/6/2012,
"user":"Franck", "query":"mongodb"} etc...
Basically, in OOP or RDBMS, I would design an Action class / table and a set of inherited classes / tables (Comment, Search, Vote).
As MongoDb is schema less, I'm inclined to set up a unique collection ("Actions") where I would store these objects instead of multiple collections (collection Actions + collection Comments with a link key to its parent Action etc...).
My question is : what about performance / response time if I try to search by specific columns ?
As I understand indexing best practices, if I want "every users searching for mongodb", I would index columns "type" + "query". But it will not concern the whole set of data, only those of type "search".
Will MongoDb engine scan the whole table or merely focus on data having this specific schema ?
If you create sparse indexes mongo will ignore any rows that don't have the key. Though there is the specific limitation of sparse indexes that they can only index one field.
However, if you are only going to query using common fields there's absolutely no reason not to use a single collection.
I.e. if an index on user+type (or date+user+type) will satisfy all your querying needs - there's no reason to create multiple collections
Tip: use date objects for dates, use object ids not names where appropriate.
Here is some useful information from MongoDB's Best Practices
Store all data for a record in a single document.
MongoDB provides atomic operations at the document level. When data
for a record is stored in a single document the entire record can be
retrieved in a single seek operation, which is very efficient. In some
cases it may not be practical to store all data in a single document,
or it may negatively impact other operations. Make the trade-offs that
are best for your application.
Avoid Large Documents.
The maximum size for documents in MongoDB is 16MB. In practice most
documents are a few kilobytes or less. Consider documents more like
rows in a table than the tables themselves. Rather than maintaining
lists of records in a single document, instead make each record a
document. For large media documents, such as video, consider using
GridFS, a convention implemented by all the drivers that stores the
binary data across many smaller documents.
Ok so the more and more I develop in Mongodb i start to wonder about the need for multiple collections vs having one large collection with indexes (since columns and fields can be different for each document unlike tabular data). If i am trying to develop in the most efficient way possible (meaning less code and reusable code) then can I use one collection for all documents and just index on a field. By having all documents in one collection with indexes then i can reuse all my form processing code and other code since it will all be inserting into the same collection.
For Example:
Lets say i am developing a contact manager and I have two types of contacts "individuals" and "businesses". My original thought was to create a collection called individuals and a second collection called businesses. But that was because im used to developing in sql where yes this would be appropriate since columns would be different for each table. The more i started to think about the flexibility of document dbs the more I started to think, "do I really need two collections for this?" If i just add a field to each document called "contact type" and index on that, do i really need two collections? Since the fields/columns in each document do not have to be the same for all (like in sql) then each document can have their own fields as long as i have a "document type" field and an index on that field.
So then i took that concept and started to think, if i only need one collection for "individuals" and "businesses" then do i even need a separate collection for "Users" or "Contact History" or any other data. In theory couldn't i build the entire solution in once collection and just have a field in each document that specifield the "type" and index on it such as "Users", "Individual Contact", "Business Contacts", "Contact History", etc, and if it is a document related to another document i can index on the "parent key/foreign" Id field...
This would allow me to code the front end dynamically since the form processing code would all be the same (inserting into the same collection). This would save a lot of coding but i want to make sure by using indexes and secondary indexes that the db would still run fast and not cause future problems as the collection grew. As you can imagine, if everything was in one collection there might be hundreds of thousands even millions of documents in this collection as the user base grows but it would have indexes and secondary indexes to optimize performance.
My question is: Is this a common method mongodb developers use? Why or why not? What are the downfalls, if any? If this is a commonly used method, please also give any positives to using this method. thank you.
This is a really big point in Mongo and the answer is a little bit more of an art than science. Having one collection full of gigantic documents is definitely an anti-pattern because it works against many of Mongo's features.
For instance, when retrieving documents, you can only retrieve a whole document out of a collection (not entirely true, but mostly). So if you have huge documents, you're retrieving huge documents each time. Also, having huge documents makes sharding less flexible since only the top level documents are indexed (and hence, sharded) in each collection. You can index values deep into a document, but the index value is associated with the top level document.
At the same time, going purely relational is also an anti-pattern because you've lost a lot of the referential integrity by going to Mongo in the first place. Also, all joins are done in application memory, so each one requires a full round-trip (slow).
So the answer is to do something in between. I'm thinking you'll probably want a collection for individuals and a different collection for businesses in this case. I say this because it seem like businesses have enough meta-data associated that it could bulk up a lot. (Also, I individual-business relationship seems like a many-to-many). However, an individual might have a Name object (with first and last properties). That would be a bad idea to make Name into a separate collection.
Some info from 10gen about schema design: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Schema+Design
EDIT
Also, Mongo has limited support for transactions - in the form of atomic aggregates. When you insert an object into mongo, the entire object is either inserted or not inserted. So you're application domain requires consistency between certain objects, you probably want to keep them in the same document/collection.
For example, consider an application that requires that a User always has a Name object (containing FirstName, LastName, and MiddleInitial). If a User was somehow inserted with no corresponding Name, the data would be considered to be corrupted. In an RDBMS you would wrap a transaction around the operations to insert User and Name. In Mongo, we make sure Name is in the same document (aggregate) as User to achieve the same effect.
Your example is a little less clear, since I don't understand the business cases. One thing that does come to mind is that Mongo has excellent support for inheritance. It might make sense to put all users, individuals, and potentially businesses into the same collection (depending on how the application is modeled). If one individual has many contacts, you probably want individuals to have an array of IDs. If your application requires that you get a quick preview of contacts, you might consider duplicating part of an individual and storing an array of contact objects.
If you're used to RDBMS thinking, you probably think all your data always has to be consistent. The truth is, that's probably not entirely true. This concept of applying atomic aggregates to the domain has been preached heavily by the DDD community recently. When you look at your domain in depth, like your business users do, the consistency boundaries should become distinct.
MongoDB, and NoSQL in general, is about de-normalising data and about reducing joins. It goes against normal SQL thinking.
In your case, I don't see any reason why you would want to have separate collections because it introduces unnecessary complexity and performance overhead. Consider, for example, if you wanted to have a screen that displayed all contacts, in alphabetical order. If you have one single collection for contacts, then its really easy, but if you have two collections it becomes a more complicated proposition.
Where I would have multiple collections is if your application had multiple users storing contacts. I would then have one collection for each user. This makes it so easy to extract out that users contacts.
I am fairly new to mongodb. I am creating a web app which allows insert and search for multiple products such as laptop, hard driver, webcamm... My question is should I place all of them in a same collection such as "computer" or should I place each product in their own collection like "laptop", "hard driver", "webcam" so that when user search and insert for a product it will be faster ?
Thanks a lot
Generally speaking you should use one collection per "type" of thing you're storing. It sounds like all the examples you've given above would fall under a product "type" and should be in the same collection. Documents in the same collection need not all have the same fields, though for products you will probably have several fields in common across all documents: name, price, manufacturer, etc; each document "sub-type" might have several fields in common, like hard drives might all have RPM, storage capacity, form factor, interface (SATA2/3, IDE, etc).
The rationale for this advice is that MongoDB queries are performed on a single collection at a time. If you want to show search results that cover the different categories of products you have, then this is simple with one collection, but more difficult with several (and less performant).
As far as query performance is concerned, be sure to create indexes on the fields that you are searching on. If you allow search by product name or manufacturer, you would have an index on name, and another index on manufacturer. Your exact indexes will vary depending on the fields you have in your documents.
Insert speed, on the other hand, will be faster the fewer indexes you have (since each index potentially needs to be updated each time you save or update a document), so it is important not to create more indexes than you'll actually need.
For more on these topics, see the MongoDB docs on schema design and indexes, as well as the presentations on 10gen.com from 10gen speakers and MongoDB users.
I suggest to start with one collection. It is much simpler to search through the one collection rather then collection per product. And in the future if you queries against collection become slow you can start thinking about how to speed up them.
Mongodb has fairly fast indexes and it was design to be scalable, so once you will need scale your database -- replica sets and auto sharing in place.