MongoDB VS mongo-express

MongoDB — a database service

MongoDB is an open source NoSQL Document database which horizontally scales utilizing clustered servers in replica-sets. A great option for testing and performing local development with MongoDB is using Docker and Docker Compose. The following docker compose spec will create a local docker container running MongoDB with the data persisted to a docker volume.

MongoDB (Mongoose)

Databases Backend developers use databases like MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB (NoSQL), or Redis (an in-memory database) to store and manage data. It is important for persistent data storage and retrieval in web applications.

MongoDB{:target="_blank"} is a document-oriented database with high scalability and flexibility for handling unstructured or semi-structured data. It offers rich querying capabilities, indexing options, and support for distributed data storage with a technique called “sharding”.

NoSQL databases are non-relational databases with flexible schema designed for high performance at a massive scale. Unlike traditional relational databases, which use tables and predefined schemas, NoSQL databases use a variety of data models. There are 4 main types of NoSQL databases - document, graph, key-value, and column-oriented databases. NoSQL databases generally are well-suited for unstructured data, large-scale applications, and agile development processes. The most popular examples of NoSQL databases are MongoDB (document), Memgraph (graph), Redis (key-value store) and Apache HBase (column-oriented).

Our example application will be based on the ME*N stack where M is a MongoDB (but it could be MySQL, or any other) database. E is for Express, which is a backend framework that sits on top of Node.JS. There are others but Express is extremely common and will meet our needs well. N is for the JavaScript runtime Node.js but Deno and Bun are possible alternatives. Finally the * is for the frontend framework such as Angular (MEAN), React (MERN) or Vue (MEVN), to name a few. However, in our example we will not be using a framework (to keep it agnostic and besides it is not that complicated), instead we will be using the native web technologies (HTML, CSS and JS).

MongoDB is a highly scalable document-type database. Its flexible schema approach allows developers to adapt and modify the data structure as needed, providing agility in application development.

MongoDB is an open-source, document-oriented database, meaning it stores data in a semi-structured format similar to JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), known as BSON (Binary JSON).

MongoDB: Network details (name, host, number of participants) are stored in MongoDB. When in development mode, Mongo Express is available at http://localhost:8081, and provides a web-based administrative interface.

The Makefile contains common bash commands that I use for tasks like starting and stopping the containers, seeding data, seeing logs etc. The docker-compose.yaml file contains definitions for the different services such as the database service, the API itself and a mongo-express service for easy database administration. Source code for the API lives inside src. Top level structure of that directory is as follows -