NoSQL Based Enterprise Development – Top 5 Things Developers Love about Mongo DB
Mongo DB is one of the most popular NoSQL databases lately, much easier to set up and effortless to handle. Enterprise application developers now spend more time building features for their applications. With the use of MongoDB, developers can effortlessly build their applications much quicker with a well-supported infrastructure of this database. Mongo DB also features high availability and automatic failover, making it comfortable for the developers to work more confidently. You must select carefully after considering the features.
This article will discuss the top five features that make MongoDB the best choice of enterprise developers.
- Very easy to setup
As the first and foremost point to discuss, MongoDB is very easy to install and deploy. The developers can start writing their codes immediately for their applications. As discussed, the installation of this database is much simpler on any operating system. MongoDB is ready to go off-the-shelf with Windows, Linux, Mac, and so on. You can also download the torball, extract it, and configure the DB path to run it. You can also spin up this database with Kubernetes.
- Flexible schema
Another great feature that makes mongo DB developers the best choice is its flexible schema. Primarily, MongoDB can function as a schema-less database. The developers are not stuck to any predefined schema, which means we do not have to define the data type in the collection before trying to insert a field. The schema can be differentiated across the documents in the collection. Even when you have to change the document structure in the given collection, you need to update the document with a new structure. If you want to append a new field to the given table, you can easily do it using the UPDATE function without specifying the type of column. This feature also allows the related documents to be embedded as one single document.
- Fault tolerance
MongoDB comes with built-in replication features, which ensure high redundancy and availability. As it keeps multiple copies of data in different servers, MongoDB offers an additional layer of fault tolerance if any failure or loss of the database server exists. Keeping multiple copies of the same set of data at different geographical locations will also help increase reading availability and write with a sound backup.
In MongoDB, the tolerance limit is specified by the number of available nodes in case of a failure to elect a new primary. A proper fault tolerance configuration will be the right mix of budget and business considerations. To get replica and fault tolerance of 1, we may require at least three nodes. Even if one node fails, there may still be a majority of nodes available to act as the new primary. In another case, if the number of nodes is 6 and the majority required for electing a new primary is set as 4, then the fault tolerance level is 2.To understand this concept in more detail, book a free consultation with RemoteDBA experts.
- Scalability
Scalability is another key feature of MongoDB, which makes it a favorite of developers. It has an easily scale-out architecture, which can facilitate a high volume of data and database traffic. In any DBMS system, the database’s growth is managed in two distinct methods as Vertical Scaling and Horizontal Scaling.
- Vertical scaling works by increasing the capacity of a server with a more powerful CPU. It can also be done by increasing the RAM or by extending the disk space.
- In horizontal scaling, the data is divided into various smaller machines, so it does not require any code change to be made at the application level. Mongo DB can support sharding by using horizontal scaling. From the development point of view, this is much cost-effective as more data can be written or read. With horizontal scaling. When there is a growth in the data set, you can add a new shard at any time, and MongoDB will migrate data automatically onto this shard.
Sharding happens at the collection level, where each of the documents has a short key, which will decide which shard the document should go into. An application may not send a request for sharding, but it sends the request to the query router called MongoS, which intern redirects the read or write request to the respective shard.
- Performance
Performance of the databases may vary with many factors as the load, application queries, design structure, etc. In the case of MongoDB, it can handle huge volumes of structured and unstructured data. It also allows the users to query differently by making it more appropriate for their workload. So, it is always faster to retrieve related data than the data joints across various collections as in relational databases.
To ensure better performance, one has to ensure that the working set fits in the RAM. As the data persist in the hard disk while executing a query, it will fetch the data from local RAM. So, it is important to have the right indexes and enough RAM space to take advantage of MongoDB features.
Overall, MongoDB is a feature-rich and flexible way to start with the NoSQL databases for developers. It features a highly flexible data model, automatic failover, simple and easy to handle query syntax, and most importantly, high scalability. Mongo DB also has excellent documentation, which makes the user’s life much easier. Mongo DB has both Community and Enterprise editions. Resources available for the Community Edition are truly free to use. Enterprise comes as a part of the enterprise subscription of Mongo DB, which also includes providing support for deployment and maintenance. First, you need to do a thorough analysis of your enterprise application and database requirements to consider MongoDB as your choice of backend. Once it is fixed, you can consider the appropriate edition to choose, which may depend on your budget for the project and the need for you to get external database management support.
