When we think about a good website, one of the most important things is the speed and retrieval time of the website. Latency can hamper the performance of the website as well as user experience. As a web developer to avoid this you need to have a good database, namely a database that will not only be robust and scalable but also cost saving.
Owing to the technological progress there are a number of databases available in the market today. But the choice of database largely depends on the kind of data you are dealing with as each web app has a different requirement. In this post, we’ll be talking about the newly emerged MongoDB and should you as a Web Pro make the switch.
What is MongoDB?
MongoDB is an open-source leading NoSQL (Not only SQL) database. In MongoDB data is stored in the form of documents, unlike the traditional SQL where data is stored in Tables. Here data can be unstructured i.e in no fixed format and size. Hence, it becomes easier to transfer data from servers to web apps and vice-versa.
Benefits of MongoDB
Being a non-relational database, MongoDB has several benefits like being impressively built and cross-platform. Let’s have a detailed look at the advantages of MongoDB,
- Store Large Volume of Data
SQL (Structured Query Language) databases are relational in nature and store data in a structured format. But with the everything going online, the data generated is vast as well as the nature of data varies from one person and even from one platform to another. Consider this example, if you’re a Web Pro and have a huge customer base with large amounts of data or you are in the development business with customer profiles, each customer has unique preferences, location, history of purchases made, a wishlist for future purchases, linked social media profiles so on and so forth. The amount of data that is generated is different. Since MongoDB is document-oriented it is far easier to store a large amount of data. - Scalable Architecture
As your business grows so does the amount of data associated with it grows. This increase in data shouldn’t restrict the performance of your web application. MongoDB has a scalable architecture that performs well in such a state of escalated workload. - Cloud Compatible
Being a web business, you cannot afford to experience downtime nor can you afford to lose your data. Though the downtime is taken care of by the hosting you choose, the back end data solely depends on where you store it. A software solution that has cloud connectivity is reliable, offers great connectivity and flexibility. MongoDB is a cloud-based database makes partitioning easy and also helps in distributing data across multiple servers. - Developer Friendly
As covered above, MongoDB is agile, open source and cross-platform compatible. Also being cloud compatible it boosts the development of applications on Compute Engine, Google Cloud Platform. It’s also adaptable to .NET applications, Java platform, PHP and many others.
When to use MongoDB
Now that we’ve seen the benefits of MongoDB, let’s have a look at when it would be most suitable to switch to it,
- When you collect Real-Time Data
If you’re a web developer as well as run an e-commerce business that means you’re collecting data in real time as it is of utmost importance for customer retention. This is only possible if the product the customer is viewing and is unavailable your system is able to suggest something similar based on behaviour and pattern, else you have the risk of losing a potential customer. MongoDB is highly effective in such situations, as it stores data in the form of documents both JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and BSON (Binary JSON) and usually applications written to predict real-time analyses too are written in Java. Converting Java objects to JSON and vice-versa are faster compared to other formats, thus making MongoDB a good choice for analyzing real-time data. - When you have Sensor Oriented Data
Today IoT (Internet of Things) is present everywhere and the data that can be collected can be in the form of text and even multimedia. For instance a smartphone, a wearable are the most basic example of an IoT device with it having sensors.As a web developer, if your web apps collect data from IoT devices which have sensors embedded in them the amount of data generated will be in heaps, storing that kind of data is a mammoth task. Not only this but it needs to be stored and retrieved in real time. This is where MongoDB helps effectively both in the collection of real-time data as covered above and also in scaling the data generated. Allowing your customers a seamless user experience. - When Running or Developing a CMS
If you are running a CMS (Content Management System) or building one, MongoDB fits the criteria. The 3 features as listed by MongoDB that make it reliable are; Flexible Data Model, Scalability and lower cost. Apart from this, Drupal a popular CMS allows for integration with MongoDB too.
Conclusion
Overall every web design and application is different, each having a different set of requirements. Before taking the plunge and shifting to an entirely new database, weigh the pros and cons as well as take the aforementioned points into consideration. If you as a web pro think, you’re less likely to grow wrt data or aren’t dealing with sensor data at all it is best to stick with traditional SQL databases. However, if you know your data will increase or you develop IoT applications you should consider switching.
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