Mongo DB has been wildly popular ever
since its introduction for plenty of reasons. The biggest one was because it
got rid of the Object-Relation Mapping to a large extent, which had been the
source of trouble of programmers for years. Even today, it is the 5th most
popular database. However, the graph of popularity of Mongo DB decreased somewhat
over the years, due to introduction of more advanced and simplified NoSQL databases. This might change with the release of
Mongo DB 3.4, released late last year. According to the company, they seek to
attain a "digital
transformation" with this release.
The clear
message that the company gave with this release was that it is aiming to
simplify the life of large enterprises that have depended upon Mongo DB for
long now. Like Python, Mongo DB is aiming to evolve so that
it alone suffices for tasks that earlier required multiple technologies. Since
we have seen this formula succeeding more than once, we have to admit this is a
very smart move from the company.
Graph
support was the need of the hour in Mongo DB for quite
some time now. Taking more than 3 years to become a reality, it is arguably the
biggest addition in the new version. While it does not seem to pose any threat
to established graph databases like Neo4J, the graph support is sure to
simplify things for its existing users. This feature is sure to have large
impact, as it will facilitate companies to explore hitherto doubted avenues
like Deep Analytics, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. This would
be further aided by Atlas, Mongo DB's
database cloud service released earlier last year.
Ecommerce websites working upon Mongo DB had toiled hard for long to
provide decent search functionality to its customers. This ends with the
faceted navigation feature, which uses filters to narrow down the query
results. This ensures faster and more relevant search results. Also, a
read-only mode was introduced that could expose the information of an
application while preventing any modification. Another huge feature was the
creation of Geo-distributed Mongo DB
zones, which deals with the problem of data sovereignty and solves it by providing
tagging via a higher abstraction of “zones”.
The release also had few things in store for the
regular users. The new SQL interface is sure to greatly ease things for the
users who have struggled for long to import their SQL code into Mongo. Mongo DB
also introduced the ($switch) operator,
which greatly simplifies complex branching, while making it more readable. Like
the popular "switch" expression, it tests a number of cases,
executing only the one that turns out to be true. Another addition was the ($reduce) operator, that could reduce
the results of multiple arrays into a single expression.
Apart from this, there has been a whole array of
other additions, whose actual importance would only be realized in the long
run. This includes elastic clustering, tunable consistency and enhanced DBA.
Overall, this release has been quite impressive
and an instant success. Mongo DB has made its intention very clear: It is here
to stay and win. With this, other NoSQL providers like Redis and Cassandra as
well as established SQL players like MySQL and Oracle will have to up their
game.
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