Why do the Startups Prefer NoSQL and the Significant of MongoDB

Updated on Jan 07, 2020

NoSQL is now being used by even the huge web-scale companies like Amazon and Google, and the ever-increasing power of NoSQL is now largely discussed in the industry. The engineers who deal with technologies at much simpler scale are also wondering what NoSQL means for them? It is also being said that NoSQL is the future and sooner or later it may replace a wide majority of the conventional SQL implementations.

Echoing these thoughts, even the small business owners believe that NoSQL is largely better than relational databases for web applications and cloud. In fact, many of the IT engineers who had seen all the ups and downs of the technology industry feel that the hype of NoSQL is largely overselling the benefits of NoSQL even when these are easy ways to fill conferences and get some page views.

What is NoSQL? #

NoSQL stands for Not Only SQL and as its name implies, but this is also a unique approach to the database management, which was revolving around conventional relational DBMS for more than a couple of decades. Majority of such data are in the form of graphs, columns, key-value pairs, and in the form of documents. As an alternative to traditional databases, NoSQL is very useful for handling a huge set of data which is unstructured. NoSQL also caters to the changing need for real-time analysis of data and also ensure smoother operation.

All the hype towards NoSQL came due to many developers entering into this field and the exceptional growth in the use of smartphones. The enrolment into computer science programs was growing dramatically over the last several years and different coding boot camps also which are getting established. Online technology learning is also flourishing.

The engineers constantly try to learn in an industry which is always changing. So, whenever there is something to sell in terms of technology, it is always effective to play into the engineers’ worse fear of being left behind. At the worse, this leads to the concept of chasing new technology rather than solving the issues.

In fact, SQL and NoSQL both have benefits and flaws; however, the latter is considered to be a better approach in big data applications now. However, the misplaced hype may outweigh the structural shifts, more so in case of technical success of start-ups.

MongoDB for startups #

MongoDB is now considered to be one of the top NoSQL database systems which are also open source and documented oriented. Unlike SQL querying, is MongoDB uses an unstructured query language too. Instead of columns and rows as in case of traditional DBMS, MongoDB is fine-tuned to work on the document collections. With an unconventional offbeat approach to database administration, MongoDB puts forth its own unique set of benefits over the traditional relational databases.

As we have seen, big data will experience exponential growth, and it has been on top of the business operational ladder. No, MongoDB has the unique ability to get adjusted to the speed and offer seamless functionality, unlike the traditional relational database management systems. Let's further explore some of the reasons for this change.

Data structure #

The traditional relational databases store data in rows and columns in a structured manner. However, for unstructured data pumping in from different sources in a variety of data types like social media, POS, various locations, and in different forms. In this case, a NoSQL database can be an ideal choice as it will have no constraints in terms of size or type of data. MongoDB is a very flexible document-based DB store which can contain binary data types of various sorts without any specific definitions. You can refer to RemoteDBA.com for such details.

Supporting cloud computing #

Cloud storage is so common nowadays, which puts forth easily scalable storage solutions to all types of organizations. It is a much cost effective and flexible storage model, which demands the data to spread across various servers to scale up or down as needed. Ability to partition the data across multiple nodes and compatibility makes MongoDB a perfect solution in terms of cost-effective database management.

MongoDB features #

As we discussed above, MongoDB has both benefits and disadvantages. Along with offering its core functionality focused on bringing out the most of modern day reporting, other unique features which make MongoDB a favorite start-up choice are as below:

Real-time analysis and reporting - Pulling the data together from various silos to draw a real-time picture will surely be a challenging task, but the flexibility of MongoDB will enable this with seamless integration capabilities.
Content management with CMS: The definition of content is constantly evolving. Content is not just limited to text, but actually spreading across various audiovisual mediums. Content for differently able people also is the need of the age with Web Content Accessibility mandates.
Location-specific analytics: When the information produced is based on the locations, then the built-in spatial function of MongoDB will offer easy access to location-specific data also without any troublesome procedures to be adopted for data extraction.
Internet of Things: IoT is wide-spreading lately, and the diversity of data points also has increased multi folds, which debilitate the traditional RDBMS’. Extraction, transformation, and loading can be a time-taking approach to DBMS, which can be circumvented with the use of NoSQL DBs like MongoDB with its ability to analyze data within the database itself.

What will be MongoDB at the next phase? #

From its inception about a decade ago, MongoDB had grown equivalent to its principal rival of MySQL in the NoSQL era. Like its predecessors, MongoDB also was known for its relatively simple approach and being a developer-friendly to implement quickly. It also took advantage of JSON document formats, which represents the most complex data types without the need for any additional enforcement to fit into the relational database structure.

In the coming day, we can expect MongoDB and its counterparts to grow by doing the gap-filling. As MongoDB evolved based on a well-established model of open core, we can further expect the same degree of growth in this proprietary-monitoring tool with many add-ons coming up.