Data Modeling for MongoDB

Review by David Haertzen

NoSQL Databases Benefit from Data Modeling is an important message delivered by Steve Hoberman’s book titled Data Modeling for MongoDB. To understand why this is so, we need to understand both data modeling and NoSQL databases – specifically MongoDB. The book includes numerous examples and templates that help the reader to understand and gain new skills.

The book explains NoSQL databases by showing the simularites and differences of SQL and NoSQL. This is done at a high level at the beginning of the book which introduces NoSQL databases. Here we learn that major types of NoSQL databases include:

  • Document Databases – stores business information in containers known as documents. MongoDB is a Document Database.
  • Key Value Databases – stores information as pairs of keys and their values. Project Voldemort is a Key Value Database.
  • Column Oriented Databases – stores data in columns which can consist of complex datatypes. Cassandra is a Column Oriented Database.
  • Graph Databases – stores data as nodes and connections between nodels. Allegro is a Graph Database