Deeper into the data fabric with MongoDB
Much as we would like it to be, the Computer Weekly Developer Network and Open Source Insider team can’t be everywhere at once — and this week, that means we’re missing MongoDB World 2019 in New York.
In light of this absence, we have been to the local deli to stock up on bagels, beef pastrami with dill pickles and knocked on our neighbour’s door to shout: “ba-da-bing, fo’get-about-it.”
So then, stereotyped exaggeration out of the way, what did open source purists at MongoDB get up to in the Big Apple this week?
One of the major pieces of news saw the company unveiling its product vision for Realm, a mobile database and synchronisation platform company it acquired in May of 2019, which will now merge with the serverless platform MongoDB Stitch.
Realm’s synchronization protocol will connect with the MongoDB Atlas global cloud database on the backend, making Realm Sync a way for developers to connect data to the devices running their applications.
“As a part of MongoDB, Realm will become the default database for mobile developers and the easiest way to build real-time data applications in the browser and in iOS and Android devices,” claimed the company, grandly, in a press statement.
Beyond the database
The company also announced several new cloud services and features.
The event saw the introduction of Data Lake, Full Text Search and MongoDB Atlas Auto Scaling as well as the general availability of MongoDB Charts, all of which are intended to drive a competitive edge with data in multiple stages of the data layer.
IDC predicts that by 2025 global data will reach 175 Zettabytes and 49% of it will reside in the public cloud. Yet the complexity of Hadoop and the rigidity of traditional data warehouses are making it increasingly difficult and expensive to get clear value from rich, modern data in the cloud.
MongoDB Search gives developers and users the option to filter, rank and sort through their data to surface the most relevant results.
However, to gain access to rich search functionality, many organisations pair their database with a search engine such as Elasticsearch or Solr, which MongoDB claims can complicate development and operations — because we end up with two entirely separate systems to learn, maintain and scale.
“Atlas Full Text Search provides rich text search capabilities based on Apache Lucene 8 against fully managed MongoDB databases with no additional infrastructure or systems to manage. Once indexes have been created using either the Atlas UI or API, developers can run sophisticated search queries using MQL, saving significant time and energy,” noted MongoDB, in its product announcement specifications.
MongoDB also has visualisation technologies and MongoDB Charts is now generally available.
Available as a managed service in MongoDB Atlas, or downloadable to run on-premises, users can create charts and graphs, build dashboards, share them with other team members for collaboration and embed them directly into web apps to create more engaging user experiences.
To top all that, the company also announced the latest version of its core database, MongoDB 4.2. Key features such as distributed transactions, field level encryption (FLE) and an updated Kubernetes Operator.
This is really just a taster of what the firm is discussing in Manhatten this week, although we have attempted to cover most of the major bases.
It is of note to mention that MongoDB issued an 1858 word-long press statement covering three major news headline streams without using a single “I’m delighted that we are blah blah blah,” said the MongoDB CEO.
They (it, the company) must have had some real product-spec related news to go through… who’d a thunk it?
