What is MongoDB?
MongoDB is form of NoSQL database that works as cross platform and open source document oriented database. MongoDB obviates the table based structure of relational database to adopt JSON-LIKE documents with dynamic schemas and known as BSON. MongoDB facilitates faster and easier data integration for specific types of files. MongoDB has ability to scale up from a single server environment to very large and multi-location and complex infrastructures. It is designed to offer remarkable flexibility and high availability.
MongoDB was originally developed as 10gen by MongoDB Inc in October 2007. It had a major part as Platform as a Service on the lines of Google App Engine and Windows Azure. In the year 2009, the development was moved to open source. MongoDB is presently being used as database form large number of significant websites such as SourceForge, eBay, The New York Times, and Craigslist. It is one of the most sought after databases offered under GNU Affero General Public License. Language drivers of MongoDB are available under the Apache license.
MongoDB enables ad hoc queries by supporting range queries, search by field, and regular expression searches. It also enables indexing of any field in the BSON document and facilitates high availability through replica sets that include two or more copies of the original data.
MongoDB leverages Sharding method to meet the demands of data growth. Sharding facilitates storing of data across large number of machines. It also allows horizontal scaling of MongoDB by data distribution and splitting into ranges followed by storage of data in multiple shards that may be located in multiple servers. Method of data distribution via Sharding is determined with help of shard keys.
Aggregation operations and batch processing can be performed by applying MapReduce. MongoDB also facilitates its use as a file system by performing in a distributed manner and leveraging the functions mentioned earlier.
