#DDBIndia

Building your first app;

an introduction to MongoDB
Prasoon Kumar
Consulting Engineer, MongoDB

What is MongoDB?

MongoDB is a ___________ database

1. Document
2. Open source
3. High performance
4. Horizontally scalable
5. Full featured

1. Document Database
Not for .PDF & .DOC files
A document is essentially an associative array
Document = JSON object
Document = PHP Array
Document = Python Dict
Document = Ruby Hash
etc

Scalability & Performance

1. Database Landscape
Memcached
MongoDB

RDBMS

Depth of Functionality

1. NoSQL Data Model

Key-Value
Store

Document
Database

Riak
MongoDB

Column-Family
Stores

Graph
Databases

Amazon
SimpleDB

Neo4J

Cassandra

FlockDB

Hbase

OrientDB

Memcache
CouchDB
Project
Voldemort
OrientDB
Redis
Hypertable
BerkeleyDB

1. Database Evolution
2010
1990

2000

RDBMS

Operational
Database

NoSQL

RDBMS

Key-Value/
Wide-column
Document DB

RDBMS
Datawarehousing

OLAP/DW

Hadoop
OLAP/DW

2. Open Source
MongoDB is an open source project
On GitHub
Licensed under the AGPL
Started & sponsored by MongoDB Inc (formerly

known as 10gen)
Commercial licenses available
Contributions welcome

2. Global Community
7,000,000+

MongoDB Downloads

150,000+

Online Education Registrants

35,000+

MongoDB Management Service (MMS) Users

30,000+

MongoDB User Group Members

20,000+

MongoDB Days Attendees

3. High Performance
Written in C++
Extensive use of memory-mapped files

i.e. read-through write-through memory caching.

Runs nearly everywhere
Data serialized as BSON (fast parsing)
Full support for primary & secondary indexes
Document model = less work

3. Performance

Better Data
Locality

In-Memory Caching

In-Place
Updates

4. Scalability
Auto-Sharding

Increase capacity as you go

Commodity and cloud architectures
Improved operational simplicity and cost visibility

4. High Availability

Automated replication and failover

Multi-data center support
Improved operational simplicity (e.g., HW swaps)
Data durability and consistency

4. Scalability: MongoDB Architecture

5. Full Featured
Ad Hoc queries
Real time aggregation
Rich query capabilities
Strongly consistent
Geospatial features
Support for most programming languages
Flexible schema

mongodb.org/downloads

Running MongoDB
$ tar zxvf mongodb-osx-x86_64-2.6.0.tgz
$ cd mongodb-osx-i386-2.6.0/bin
$ mkdir p /data/db
$ ./mongod

Mongo Shell
MacBook-Pro-:~ $ mongo
MongoDB shell version: 2.6.0
connecting to: test
> db.test.insert({text: 'Welcome to MongoDB'})
> db.test.find().pretty()
{
"_id" : ObjectId("51c34130fbd5d7261b4cdb55"),
"text" : "Welcome to MongoDB"
}

_id
_id is the primary key in MongoDB
Automatically indexed
Automatically created as an ObjectId if not provided
Any unique immutable value could be used

ObjectId
ObjectId is a special 12 byte value
Guaranteed to be unique across your cluster
ObjectId("50804d0bd94ccab2da652599")

|----ts-----||---mac---||-pid-||----inc-----|
4
3
2
3

Document Database

Terminology
RDBMS

MongoDB

Table, View

Collection

Row

Document

Index

Index

Join

Embedded Document

Foreign Key

Reference

Partition

Shard

Lets Build a Blog

First step in any application is

Determine your entities

Entities in our Blogging System

Users (post authors)
Article
Comments
Tags, Category
Interactions (views, clicks)

In a relational base app

We would start by doing schema
design

Typical (relational) ERD

Category
Name
URL

User
Name
Email address

Article
Name
Slug
Publish date
Text

Comment
Comment
Date
Author

Tag
Name
URL

In a MongoDB based app

We start building our app
and let the schema evolve

MongoDB ERD
Article

User
Name
Email address

Name
Slug
Publish date
Text
Author

Comment[]
Comment
Date
Author

Tag[]
Value

Category[]
Value

Disk seeks and data locality

Seek = 5+ ms

Read = really really

fast

Post
Author

Comment

Disk seeks and data locality

Post
Author

Comment
Comment
Comment
Comment

Comment

MongoDB Language Driver

Real applications are not

built in the shell

MongoDB has native

bindings for over 12
languages

MongoDB Drivers
Official Support for 12 languages
Community drivers for tons more
Drivers connect to mongo servers
Drivers translate BSON into native types
mongo shell is not a driver, but works like one in some

ways
Installed using typical means (maven, npm, pecl, gem,

pip)

Working With MongoDB

Design schema.. In application code

# Python dictionary (or object)
>>> article = { title : Schema design in MongoDB,
author : prasoonk,
section : schema,
slug : schema-design-in-mongodb,
text : Data in MongoDB has a flexible schema.
So, 2 documents neednt have same structure.
It allows implicit schema to evolve.,
date : datetime.utcnow(),
tags : [MongoDB, schema] }
>>> db[articles].insert(article)

Lets add a headline image

>>> img_data = Binary(open(article_img.jpg).read())
>>> article = { title : Schema evolutionin MongoDB,
author : mattbates,
section : schema,
slug : schema-evolution-in-mongodb,
text : MongoDb has dynamic schema. For good
performance, you would need an implicit
structure and indexes,
date : datetime.utcnow(),
tags : [MongoDB, schema, migration],
headline_img : {
img : img_data,
caption : A sample document at the shell
}}

And different types of article

>>> article = { title : Favourite web application framework,
author : prasoonk,
section : web-dev,
slug : web-app-frameworks,
gallery : [
{ img_url : http://x.com/45rty, caption : Flask, ..},
..
]
date : datetime.utcnow(),
tags : [Python, web],
}
>>> db[articles].insert(article)

Users and profiles

>>> user = {
'user' : 'prasoonk',
'email' : '[email protected]',
'password' : 'prasoon101',
'joined' : datetime.utcnow(),
'location' : { 'city' : 'Mumbai' },
}
} >>> db[users].insert(user)

Modelling comments (1)

Two collections articles and comments
Use a reference (i.e. foreign key) to link together
But.. N+1 queries to retrieve article and comments
{

_id : ObjectId(..),
title : Schema design in MongoDB,
author : mattbates,
date : ISODate(..),
tags : [MongoDB, schema],
section : schema,
slug : schema-design-in-mongodb,
comments : [ ObjectId(..),]

_id : ObjectId(..),
article_id : 1,
text : A great article, helped me
understand schema design,
date : ISODate(..),,
author : johnsmith

Modelling comments (2)

{

Single articles collection

embed comments in article

documents
Pros
Single query, document designed

for the access pattern

Locality (disk, shard)

Cons
Comments array is unbounded;
documents will grow in size
(remember 16MB document
limit)

_id : ObjectId(..),
title : Schema design in MongoDB,
author : mattbates,
date : ISODate(..),
tags : [MongoDB,schema],

comments : [
{
text : A great article, helped me
understand schema design,
date : ISODate(..),
author : johnsmith
},

Modelling comments (3)

Another option: hybrid of (2) and (3), embed

top x comments (e.g. by date, popularity) into

the article document
Fixed-size (2.4 feature) comments array
All other comments overflow into a comments

collection (double write) in buckets

Pros
Document size is more fixed fewer moves
Single query built
Full comment history with rich query/aggregation

Modelling comments (3)

{
_id : ObjectId(..),
title : Schema design in MongoDB,
author : mattbates,
date : ISODate(..),
tags : [MongoDB, schema],

comments_count: 45,
comments_pages : 1
comments : [
{
text : A great article, helped me
understand schema design,
date : ISODate(..),
author : johnsmith
},

]
}

Total number of comments

Integer counter updated by

update operation as
comments added/removed

Number of pages
Page is a bucket of 100

comments (see next slide..)

Fixed-size comments array

10 most recent
Sorted by date on insertion

Modelling comments (3)

{

_id : ObjectId(..),
article_id : ObjectId(..),
page : 1,
count : 42
comments : [
{
text : A great article, helped me
understand schema design,
date : ISODate(..),
author : johnsmith
},

One comment bucket

(page) document
containing up to about 100
comments
Array of 100 comment subdocuments

Modelling interactions
Interactions
Article views
Comments
(Social media sharing)

Requirements
Time series
Pre-aggregated in preparation for analytics

Modelling interactions
Document per article per day

bucketing
Daily counter and hourly sub-

document counters for interactions

Bounded array (24 hours)
Single query to retrieve daily article

interactions; ready-made for

graphing and further aggregation

_id : ObjectId(..),
article_id : ObjectId(..),
section : schema,
date : ISODate(..),
daily: { views : 45,comments : 150 }
hours : {
0 : { views : 10 },
1 : { views : 2 },

23 : { comments : 14,views : 10 }
}

JSON and RESTful API

Real applications are not built at a shell lets build a RESTful API.

Client-side
JSON
(eg AngularJS,

HTTP(S) REST

Python web
app
Pymongo driver

(BSON)

Examples to follow: Python RESTful API using Flask microframework

myCMS REST endpoints

Method

URI

Action

GET

/articles

Retrieve all articles

GET

/articles-by-tag/[tag]

Retrieve all articles by tag

GET

/articles/[article_id]

Retrieve a specific article by article_id

POST

/articles

Add a new article

GET

/articles/[article_id]/comments

Retrieve all article comments by

article_id

POST

/articles/[article_id]/comments

Add a new comment to an article.

POST

/users

Register a user user

GET

/users/[username]

Retrieve users profile

PUT

/users/[username]

Update a users profile

Getting started with the skeleton code

$ git clone http://www.github.com/mattbates/mycms_mongodb
$ cd mycms-mongodb
$ virtualenv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install r requirements.txt
$ mkdir p data/db
$ mongod --dbpath=data/db --fork --logpath=mongod.log
$ python web.py
[$ deactivate]

RESTful API methods in Python + Flask

@app.route('/cms/api/v1.0/articles', methods=['GET'])
def get_articles():
"""Retrieves all articles in the collection
sorted by date
"""
# query all articles and return a cursor sorted by date
cur = db['articles'].find().sort('date)
if not cur:
abort(400)
# iterate the cursor and add docs to a dict
articles = [article for article in cur]
return jsonify({'articles' : json.dumps(articles, default=json_util.default)})

RESTful API methods in Python + Flask

@app.route('/cms/api/v1.0/articles/<string:article_id>/comments', methods = ['POST'])
def add_comment(article_id):
"""Adds a comment to the specified article and a
bucket, as well as updating a view counter
"

page_id = article['last_comment_id'] // 100

# push the comment to the latest bucket and $inc the count
page = db['comments'].find_and_modify(
{ 'article_id' : ObjectId(article_id),
'page' : page_id},
{ '$inc' : { 'count' : 1 },
'$push' : {
'comments' : comment } },
fields= {'count' : 1},
upsert=True,
new=True)

RESTful API methods in Python + Flask

# $inc the page count if bucket size (100) is exceeded
if page['count'] > 100:
db.articles.update(
{ '_id' : article_id,
'comments_pages': article['comments_pages'] },
{ '$inc': { 'comments_pages': 1 } } )
# let's also add to the article itself
# most recent 10 comments only
res = db['articles'].update(
{'_id' : ObjectId(article_id)},
{'$push' : {'comments' : { '$each' : [comment],
'$sort' : {date' : 1 },
'$slice' : -10}},
'$inc' : {'comment_count' : 1}})

RESTful API methods in Python + Flask

def add_interaction(article_id, type):
"""Record the interaction (view/comment) for the
specified article into the daily bucket and
update an hourly counter
"""
ts = datetime.datetime.utcnow()
# $inc daily and hourly view counters in day/article stats bucket
# note the unacknowledged w=0 write concern for performance
db['interactions'].update(
{ 'article_id' : ObjectId(article_id),
'date' : datetime.datetime(ts.year, ts.month, ts.day)},
{ '$inc' : {
'daily.{}.format(type) : 1,
'hourly.{}.{}'.format(ts.hour, type) : 1
}},
upsert=True,
w=0)

Testing the API retrieve articles

$ curl -i http://localhost:5000/cms/api/v1.0/articles
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 335
Server: Werkzeug/0.9.4 Python/2.7.5
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2014 16:00:51 GMT

{
"articles": "[{\"title\": \"Schema design in MongoDB\", \"text\": \"Data in MongoDB
has a flexible schema..\", \"section\": \"schema\", \"author\": \"prasoonk\", \"date\":
{\"$date\": 1397145312505}, \"_id\": {\"$oid\": \"5346bef5f2610c064a36a793\"},
\"slug\": \"schema-design-in-mongodb\", \"tags\": [\"MongoDB\", \"schema\"]}]"}

Testing the API comment on an article

$ curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -X POST -d '{"text":"An interesting
article and a great read."}'
http://localhost:5000/cms/api/v1.0/articles/52ed73a30bd031362b3c6bb3/
comments
{
"comment": "{\"date\": {\"$date\": 1391639269724}, \"text\": \"An interesting
article and a great read.\"}
}

Schema iteration
New feature in the backlog?
Documents have dynamic schema so we just iterate the
object schema.
>>> user = { username : matt,
first : Matt,
last : Bates,
preferences : { opt_out : True } }
>>> user.save(user)

docs.mongodb.org

Online Training at MongoDB University

For More Information

Resource

Location

MongoDB Downloads

mongodb.com/download

Free Online Training

education.mongodb.com

Webinars and Events

mongodb.com/events

White Papers

mongodb.com/white-papers

Case Studies

mongodb.com/customers

Presentations

mongodb.com/presentations

Documentation

docs.mongodb.org

Additional Info

[email protected]

We've introduced a lot of

concepts here

Schema Design @
Article

User
Name
Email address

Name
Slug
Publish date
Text
Author

Comment[]
Comment
Date
Author

Tag[]
Value

Category[]
Value

Replication @
Client Application
Driver

Re
a

a
Re

Write

Secondary

Primary

Secondary

Indexing @

16

12

18

21

Sharding @
www.etiennemansard.com

Questions?

#DDJIndia @prasoonk

Thank You
Prasoon Kumar
Consulting Engineer, MongoDB