In this chapter, we started our journey through web, SQL, and NoSQL technologies, from their inception to their current states. We identified how MongoDB has been shaping the world of NoSQL databases over the years, and how it is positioned against other SQL and NoSQL solutions.

We explored MongoDB's key characteristics and how MongoDB has been used in production deployments. We identified the best practices for designing, deploying, and operating MongoDB.

Initially, we identified how to learn by going through documentation and online resources that can be used to stay up-to-date with the latest features and developments.

In the next chapter, we will go deeper into schema design and data modeling, looking at how to connect to MongoDB by using both the official drivers and an Object Document Mapper (ODM), a variation of object-relational mappers for NoSQL databases.