MongoDB Applied Design Patterns

by Rick Copeland

Whether you're building a social media site or an internal-use enterprise application, this hands-on guide shows you the connection between MongoDB and the business problems it's designed to solve. You'll learn how to apply MongoDB design patterns to several challenging domains, such as ecommerce, content management, and online gaming. Using Python and JavaScript code examples, you'll discover how MongoDB lets you scale your data model while simplifying the development process.

Many businesses launch NoSQL databases without understanding the techniques for using their features most effectively. This book demonstrates the benefits of document embedding, polymorphic schemas, and other MongoDB patterns for tackling specific big data use cases, including:

Operational intelligence: Perform real-time analytics of business data
Ecommerce: Use MongoDB as a product catalog master or inventory management system
Content management: Learn methods for storing content nodes, binary assets, and discussions
Online advertising networks: Apply techniques for frequency capping ad impressions, and keyword targeting and bidding
Social networking: Learn how to store a complex social graph, modeled after Google+
Online gaming: Provide concurrent access to character and world data for a multiplayer role-playing game

About the Author
Rick Copeland is the Principal Consultant and Founder at Arborian Consulting, a business focusing on MongoDB and Python custom development and training. Rick is a frequent speaker at MongoDB events, an avid MongoDB enthusiast, and is a charter member of 10gen's "Masters of MongoDB." In the non-MongoDB side of things, Rick is also a well-known Python developer and member of the Python Software Foundation, having contributed to a number of open-source projects and spoken at various evens and user groups.

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Technology, Nonfiction, Design, Technical, Software

196 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2013

Reviews

[William Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am always excited to find books on design patterns or architectural planning vs just how-to guides, and this book while small delivers. If you or your team are more used to relational-database structures, or believe there are better ways approaches for you to handle document-based datastores in general this book will provide wisdom and insight even if you arent specifically using MongoDB.

[LyVanna]

I want to learn mongoDB

[Alessandro Pellizzari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fino all'ultimo sono stato indeciso tra 3 e 4 stelle.

Sarebbe un buon libro tra il principiante e l'intermedio. Ha una buona selezione di pattern di modellazione del DB per diversi casi d'uso, e spiegazioni dettagliate su come sfruttarli.

I problemi, però, sono diversi:

Cerca di spiegare concetti basilari dei tipi di dato di Mongo, ma poi dà per scontato che l'utente sappia come configurare un server con replicaset e shard.

Usa Python come linguaggio per gli esempi. Che, di per sé, non sarebbe un problema. Solo che Python usa l'indentazione per distinguere i blocchi di codice, e su un tablet da 7" il codice va spesso a capo a metà di una riga, rendendo molto difficile capire se un blocco è finito o continua.

Inoltre usa concetti poco diffusi in altri linguaggi, come generatori (addirittura innestati in cicli), funzioni lambda e array comprehension, di fatto costringendo ad imparare anche concetti avanzati di Python.

Se il libro si chiamasse "MongoDB with Python" ci starebbero anche bene, ma in un libro che si prefigge di insegnare come modellare collection di MongoDB in modo indipendente dal linguaggio lo penalizzano molto.

[Marius Colacioiu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is great for learning MongoDB common design patterns. Lost of code examples validate the proposed patterns on how to use Mongo efficiently in various scenarios.

I have learned the difference between embedding subdocuments versus referencing them by "_id", how to manage polymorphic data using Mongo's dynamic schemas and how to mimic transactions, especially this part, in Mongo which is a non transactional database.

Not only I learned about this patterns, but also how to apply them in real-case scenarios like building an: e-commerce, online game, a real-time analytics and more.

Worth reading, detailed hands on reading.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book gives the reader a pretty good idea of how to use MongoDB in some real-world applications. It is not terribly long, which is good because MongoDB is just not that complex (simplicity is its strength - or weakness, depending on your point of view). I do like code examples, but it does get a little tedious reading a lot of code. Overall, though, you should be ready to use MongoDB after reading this or, if you are already using it, you should learn some new things you need to be aware of.

[Michael Kalygin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is actually a very useful book since it has detailed overview of real apps' use cases. It is short enough to read it in one day and start to apply advices and techniques in your app.

I'm pretty new to NoSQL databases, but this book helped me to understand MongoDB and in particular NoSQL philosophy better.

Personally I was interested mostly in Part I, Chapters 4 and 5. However don't skip other chapters, because they may contain plenty of interesting practical ideas.

Also this book is good for future reference!

Thanks.

[Не · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was disappointed with this book. Although I am new to MongoDB and the NoSQL world I have read about most of the "Design Patterns" listed in the book. The examples and the reasons why the author choose a specific solutions were inconsistent across the use cases. There are few mistakes in the code snippets, that did not bothered me at all, but the inconsistency in the reasoning was confusing. I felt that the last 3 chapters were unnecessary. I would recommend this book only to someone that has no(or very small) previous experience with MongoDB.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book demonstrating a lot of approaches to modelling and operating data basing on some real-world examples. The approaches suggested by the authors are rather controversial and arguable sometimes, but despite this fact this book is definitely worth reading.

[Rick Strahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read for general NoSql development issues and concepts many of which are not immediately obvious. As a relative Newbie to NoSql and Mongo this book answers many of the questions I initially had on how to manage more complex systems with a NoSql database. Great read!

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, but detailed tour of MongoDB by example. I found the discussion on sharding and GridFS particularly interesting.

[Rajat Vig · Rating 4 out of 5]

The initial few chapters are great, the ending is mostly there to fill the pages.

[John Matthews · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good examples of how to use mongo in several different scenarios. This book is for someone who is already comfortable with mongo and looking to learn some best practices.

[Robson Almeida · Rating 4 out of 5]

First part is great, but it turns tiring when the uses cases of second part show a lot of code only.

[Karthic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Must read for any Mongodb developer !

[Delhi Irc]

Location: ND5 IRC
Accession No: DL028204

[Vũ Minh Chiến]

ss