MongoDB

MongoDB is an agile and very scalable NoSQL database. The name Mongo comes from the word “humongous,” emphasizing the scalability and performance MongoDB provides. It is based on the NoSQL document store model, which means data is stored in the database as basically JSON objects rather than as the traditional columns and rows of a relational database.

MongoDB provides great website backend storage for high-traffic websites that need to store data such as user comments, blogs, or other items because it is quickly scalable and easy to implement. This book covers using the MongoDB driver library to access MongoDB from Node.js.

Node.js supports a variety of database access drivers, so the data store can easily be MySQL or some other database. However, the following are some of the reasons that MongoDB really fits in the Node.js stack well:

Document orientation: Because MongoDB is document oriented, data is stored in the database in a format that is very close to what you deal with in both server-side and client-side scripts. This eliminates the need to transfer data from rows to objects and back.

High performance: MongoDB is one of the highest-performing databases available. Especially today, with more and more people interacting with websites, it is important to have a backend that can support heavy traffic.

High availability: MongoDB’s replication model makes it very easy to maintain scalability while keeping high performance.

High scalability: MongoDB’s structure makes it easy to scale horizontally by sharding the data across multiple servers.