MongoDB Schema Design Best Practices

[@alejandromedina649]

I'm new at using MongoDB and this video has solved many doubts I had about how to design the ideal schema for my project. Thank you very much!

[@JoeKarlsson]

This is the best thing I have ever heard - thank you!

[@DIZZLEBOI44]

@@JoeKarlsson have a mongodb/admin job coming up

[@JoeKarlsson]

@@DIZZLEBOI44 Nice!

[@Ikilledthebanks]

What’s the easiest way to manage streams from mongo into snowflake using Kafka. The data structure changes and the update replace does not include data elements of the prior record. We require only the most recent update to the record no history

[@yanmoenaing71]

Rule No.1 is my favorite. => Favor embedding unless there is a compelling reason not to.

[@axelneumann8443]

Summary: With MongoDB you have to consider your access patterns not only for indexing but also for schema design. There are three options for child documents: 1. Embedding 2. Array of references in the parent 3. References in the children (foreign key)

[@compateur]

I'm sorry, but this sounded like a sales pitch :) Understandable since you work for MongoDB. MongoDB has a predecessor, namely XML databases. MongoDB has a lot in common with XML databases. I used to work a lot with XML databases and my experience is that document databases are a * bad * fit for business domain models. You talked about cons and you didn't mention the most important con: update anomalies. But wait a minute. You mentioned this problem and came up with a beautiful solution: a reference. And even better, there is something like unbounded references. I would say, keep evolving and you end up with an SQL database :). In my experience, document databases are great when you store documents as is. For example when you have a message warehouse, or for logging/auditing. XML databases are also used by publishers to store books (DocBook and DITA for example), newspapers etcetera. But using a document database for your business model. That's a bad idea to my opinion. I have the experience to use a very performant XML database as the enterprise database for a company and it had very nasty legal consequences. It was just not the right fit . A relational model is far better. It is also much better to have a schema for you business domain model. I would get very nervous if a developer would store its documents without a schema. No rules, really? Is that a positive thing for your vital business data? Good luck!

[@OfficialGOD]

I'm using mongol for logging and analytics

[@vinfern27]

When it says no rules. It means you define the rules that fit your business rather than let the rules define your business. you can enforce rules at the db level

[@InternetLiJo]

Joe you’re a great instructor. Starting with the context/use case and then referencing the parts is so appreciated. Your channel is wildly underrated. Also love the humor references.

[@JoeKarlsson]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate that.

[@BHVampireLF]

I didn´t wanted to watch a 1 hour video, I think is the first time I do something like this, and wow. I learned more in one hour than in 2 days readding weird written tutorials, guides and short videos. Thank you very much.

[@JoeKarlsson]

Oh my gosh! That's awesome! I'm so glad it was useful for you! :)

[@TonySheen-d4c]

I know it’s a bit old, but as a recent convert this was exactly what I needed 😊😊😊

[@ardalanhadizadeh1799]

what i learned after just this single video was 10x times more than a 200pgs doc i read. thank you

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got you :)

[@distributed-systems]

12:32 Embedding 17:10 Referencing

[@bartoszmazur5168]

Two way referencing is just a PURE GOLD!!! Now it seems obvious, but I was trying to solve similiar problem without that 2WR knowladge 🙈, and made no progress for few hours, THANKS MAN!

[@toneking972]

Super helpful. I was on the fence with PostgreSQL and MongoDB. But this convinced me to go Mongo

[@JoeKarlsson]

This is the best feedback - thank you so much!

[@louierichardson123]

I am creating a bug tracker web app and this has answered my questions about how I should structure my many to many relationship, so thank you!

[@JoeKarlsson]

That's so cool! Can you send me the code? I would love to check out what you're working on!

[@PuzzlingQuestions]

This was really good. One thing that made me laugh is in the begining you stressed that there are no rules and then later you have "Rule 1: favour embedding" haha I just thought that was funny. Thanks for the presentation, it was helpful!

[@JoeKarlsson]

LOL - you're totally right. I totally missed the irony! hahaha! :D

[@DaDa-gr7cy]

Great video, these intermediate videos are what youtube is lacking

[@JoeKarlsson]

Right? I feel the same way - lots of beginner level content, but not much for people beyond that. So glad you enjoyed this video!

[@andreornelas]

Really enjoyed your video. Was kinda funny when you said MongoDB has no Rules but then we have a section with Rules. hehe. Altough they are very helpful to keep in mind. Thanks for the great content!

[@JoeKarlsson]

hahaha - lol - I def lied there! :P

[@khasmeenusman3931]

No one explains mongodb schema as you did. Thank you man. I finally understood MongoDB

[@winfle]

russia is a terrorist state, btw

[@epacke]

Excellent presentation, it served super well as a foundation for the design discussions about our NoSQL schema. Although we went to with CouchDB all that you said felt relevant. Instant like!

[@daminirijhwani5792]

this one video explained more than a couple videos combined I watched before I stumbled here. :) I have subscribed.

[@JoeKarlsson]

Oh my gosh! Thank you! I'm so glad it was useful! :D

[@alirasheedmd]

Solved all my doubts man since morning was searching for embedding design. Thanks a lot 👍

[@JoeKarlsson]

That's amazing! Thank you for sharing!

[@morapedikhutwane7405]

Thanks a squillion Joe! 👊🏽 This video is very informative, helpful and enjoyable 😊

[@JoeKarlsson]

This is my favorite comment :D

[@sf2998]

Thank you for this great video. Do you think nosql can completely replace sql? I feel it can if the scheme is done properly...

[@JoeKarlsson]

It depends on the used case, but for a lot of cases noSQL databases work just fine

[@anuragtiwari3032]

Thnx a lot man , this answered so many of my doubts. Deserves 10 million views, but we all know the world 😉

[@JoeKarlsson]

🙌

[@MohamedAsfer]

WoW. Really enjoyed this session. Thanks for the effort

[@JoeKarlsson]

Thank you so much! I am so glad you enjoyed it!

[@AngeloMiranda1999]

Great informative video to get started with NoSQL when you come from a relational DB background. Thanks!

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got you! 🥰

[@splendorman7922]

better than official mongodb videos and tutorials.. thanks!

[@dgillies5420]

Love the 1960's-1970's Campagnolo Record bicycle de-exploding at around 25:20 into the video!

[@someoneelse5005]

I hate your vocal fry so much my god I hope this video is worth it EDIT: My opinion has not changed - your vocal fry is indeed terrible, but the video is extremely good, it's informative, concise, well presented and paced. I will be recommending it to everyone starting with mongo db. Also you seem like a really likeable guy :D

[@JoeKarlsson]

LOL - thank you?

[@someoneelse5005]

@@JoeKarlsson I know my message is confusing because I had such mixed feelings about this video, but everyone on my team loves it :D Apparently my ears are super sensitive to fry frequencies and nobody else minds it.

[@JoeKarlsson]

@@someoneelse5005 Your review was hilarious - It's a actually a glowing review. I'm considering printing it out and framing it! I'm so glad y'all enjoyed it. I'll be making more soon!

[@someoneelse5005]

@@JoeKarlsson I hope so, your content is killer :D

[@karamjeetsingh7637]

This was super helpful, Cleared many doubts I had. Thank you very much!

[@JoeKarlsson]

That's amazing! Thank you so much for watching! :D

[@abdulrashid2023]

One of the best video about schema design in mongoDB thanks @Joe Karlsson. I subscribed

[@princematthew2145]

Fantastic Joe. Great Learning. When you talk about embedding example regarding product and parts, you favor parts. But you keep referencing to the size limit of the document. Yes its a problem, But more than that there is a bigger problem of consistency. If you embed a part and If you update the part from a screen, you have inconsistency. When you show the product you will show the old values. I am curious as to why you are not mentioning about inconsistency? I am a newbie in nosql. heavily influence by relational theory. Eager to know your thoughts

[@vaibhavrana4953]

I am new to No SQL and coming from RDBMS background. I enjoyed this session and it gave me very good idea about how to design Mondo DB.

[@jmgomw7787]

This is a very cool, well explained and fun talk on mongodb. 100% recommeded!

[@attilathehun1561]

Nice Video , Every thing is crystal clear you saved my lots of time , i am new to mongoDB from MySql background keep it up.

[@JoeKarlsson]

This is the best compliment! Thank you so much!

[@codecomposer88]

Thanks for a good video. Coming from many years with SQL I can clearly see some benefits with NoSQL. The main selling point for me is the loose data structure of the individual documents as well as query speed when everything you need is embedded in a single document. This is where NoSQL really shines over SQL Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that in most cases we still need traditional SQL-like relationship references between decoupled documents and quickly we end up with something that looks an awful lot like good old SQL.

[@sarahahmed2112]

Thank you so much for posting this presentation. I appreciate the multiple recaps throughout the lecture, helped me a lot. And I appreciate the many resources.

[@biomedicaltechworld-btw8447]

Thanks for making such a comprehensive video for us. Stay Blessed.

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got you! 🥰

[@biomedicaltechworld-btw8447]

@@JoeKarlsson started watching MongoDB University course after this video. Your company must be proud of you. 👌🧡

[@here2thrive]

1:20 -- Already I see you are a genius. Well done with this idea.

[@ivandrofly]

43:09 - Good note 48:50 - Ref tutorial

[@scienceblossom6197]

I really enjoyed the it Joe! I just want to ask one thing, for one rule you said arrays should not grow without bound, and then in the example, it was just that! The two-way referencing in the task management app example where both users have an array of references of tasks, and tasks have an array of references to the users. So this has no bound... maybe by "without bound" you meant "extremely large"?! Thank you so much again!!!

[@lazareric]

I love you man, not many people talking about mongo, with proper knowledge of it. Good on you. An interesting question maybe, client wanted an architecture where each A collection item has many B collection items attached to it by reference, BUT querying A collection requires searching based on B collection items' properties, it was super slow, whenever I queried (50m+ documents), a collection based on properties of a different collection (so match, lookup, and the match on the lookuped documents), the query was super slow. The weird part is lookup was relatively fast even, but than the match on the lookedup documents' properties was weirdly very, very slow, any ideas why that happen? It's weird as I imagine once lookup is done, each document gets that embedded and then goes into the next stage (match) in this case, so why was match so slow, as it was supposed to match based on the already available properties embedded in the document in that stage with data in the stage (or maybe I don't understand, and it doesn't really work like that what I explained), it didn't have to use an index or do a collection scan, literally just filter documents in the stage, that's the only mind boggling thing in mongo that i don't get, everything else I love

[@josemurillo4728]

Just one! Love that part. Great vid thanks!

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got you

[@victorkingma4371]

Excelent tutorial, gave me a entire panoram of mongodb

[@prajunathunt]

The revisions at the end was helpful. Thank you

[@JoeKarlsson]

YAY

[@ashishchandwani9179]

Awesome Video! Thanks, Can you also please make a video on Querying the Data from Documents, especially when we are using referencing.

[@JoeKarlsson]

That's a great idea! I can for sure do that!

[@rajivraghu9857]

Excellent Joe!! loved you presentation. Really helped me to clarify some doubts on mongo .

[@JoeKarlsson]

I'm so glad to hear that!

[@nicolascondrea8068]

You deserve more subscribers! Flawless video, definitely learned a few gems from this one!

[@JoeKarlsson]

Thank you so much Nicolas - I may be biased, but I totally agree ;)

[@arnaudtisset]

Professional SQL developer here Actually the first part of your video is a little misleading, we do design sql databases with the queries in mind and We denormalize when necessary.

[@JoeKarlsson]

You're right - It's not an antipattern in SQL to denormalize for performance reasons - thank you for clarifying. :D

[@ashantharindu8915]

Mongodb scheme design is well explained. Thank you very much.

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got chu!

[@aminatawillane5633]

Hey there, best video ever on mongoDB schema design I ever seen that far...Thx for it... Since I am building a 5G SA tele medecine project based on mongoDB Atlas and Flutter, may I know please if u' re about to make a class for it? N thx again for that brilliant video...

[@gurmukhsingh2026]

This is the best into for MongoDB. thanks a lot!

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got you

[@BryanChance]

I wonder if many users jump to NoSQL because they don't have to formally "design" a schema. Just insert a record (they call it "row" nowadays) and any missing fields (they call it a column nowadays) are created. Now, you've got records with different fields in the same table. However, MongoDB is a great NoSQL database. I use it for metric and performance data collection and statistics. MongoDB can perform write operations very quickly. The data is automatically expired after use. MongoDB is stable as well. Running 4 years+ 24x7, zero downtime.

[@saibabaalapati8446]

I'm relieved bro this is best and helpful very much thanks ....

[@JoeKarlsson]

🥰🥰🥰

[@joseluissanchezortiz3599]

Thanks friend. You explain very good. from colombian, Im speak spanish and I dont have seen any video so well explained in Spanish

[@siddharthskumar6831]

Most underrated talks..awesome...👏👏👏👏

[@JoeKarlsson]

Oh my gosh! Thank you!!!

[@HSBTechYT]

Discovered you from Twitter. Amazing talk Joe 🙏

[@peaps]

Does referencing have to use the complicated BSON _id property? Can't we just use another normal property, like, name (presuming it to be unique) ?

[@Cons2911]

I’m early into the video but I just want to say thank you. I’m new to this, so I’m trying to understand esp coming from relational

[@alzamer88]

I think it was mentioned that you may not want to embed a document so that we won't fetch extra data that we don't want. I am not sure why this count as reason to not embed. I mean, MongoDB allows the user to specify exactly which fields to load. so, if I do not want to load the embedded document from DB to the application, I can just add it to the exclusion list. however, I know that this will save network bandwidth between DB server and app server but not sure how much impact it will have on the DB server itself; since the DB server still needs to load the document from the filesystem and then send it to the app server.

[@code2287]

Nice resource.....could we get a complete mongodb schema playlist

[@sayitlikeitis1202]

Very well explained .. Joe. Super presentation .. Thanks much !!

[@JoeKarlsson]

You are so welcome - I am so glad it helped!

[@donaldjunior1442]

Super thanks. Something not spoken about a lot. Modifying schemas structure in production. How can I drop a schema property that I don't need any more? Say username was unique on the user and we don't need that anymore in production. How can I go about that?

[@JoeKarlsson]

Great question! You will have to write an update query to go through all the appropriate documents and update the schema to your new value.

[@donaldjunior1442]

@@JoeKarlsson thanks for the response. Lost a little. To elaborate e.g. Schema({username: {required: true, unique: true}, firstName:...}) and now we don't need the username anymore. Any operations such as create collection documents without username would error.

[@harujei24]

Thank you so much! I finally understand how to design my Schema. I subscribed.

[@JoeKarlsson]

YAY! That's the best - thank you so much!

[@haishuyao4834]

Really helps doing my course project and many thannnnnnks!

[@JoeKarlsson]

Oh my gosh! So glad it's useful!

[@rallysahil]

Thanks a bunch ! It was quite useful especially to see patterns at last.

[@xKenshin13]

Actually quite helpful. Answered most of my questions. Thank you :)

[@JoeKarlsson]

That's awesome! So glad it clicked with you!

[@Adam-uu8dc]

Love the office meme. Great tutorial!

[@umeshwar21]

great , I found it is very help full video to start project with schema design

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got chu ;)

[@makari1506]

Hi Mr.Joe, Great video and I learnt a lot. I was wondering whether you’ll be able to clear a doubt I have. In my project, users and tasks collections. I would like to save who created a task in a “createdBy” field. It’s always gonna be one value and would be selected every time one or multiple tasks are fetched. According to this video, I should embed essential data such as (userId and name) that my application would display. But I want to “refer” the user data so that fields such as name are fetched correctly. I worry if I embed the name and user updates their name, it could become costly to update in all the embeds. May I know what your approach would be? Thanks

[@fernandoventilari839]

You really saved me. Thanks a lot!!! Subscribed

[@tgerambio]

This is beautifully explained. Thank you sir!

[@ranylfoumbi4641]

great! courage bro! it has solved many of my doubts

[@JoeKarlsson]

YES! That's awesome!

[@aniketsao]

Awesome video. thanks for creating and sharing it. I'm new to the NoSQL databases, is there a way to test the performance of embedding vs referencing ? given the unknowns of how an application would evolve, its hard to stick to one design. have you encountered any scenarios where over time the design needed to be changed from embedded to referencing.

[@JoeKarlsson]

The best way to determine which schema is "best" is to run experiments by running queries with different schemas and using the built-in MongoDB Performance Advisor to determine which one is fastest. And yes, I have seen people needing to shift schema's overtime all the time. It's really common for web apps to have features and requirements shift over time. So, an old schema that worked great, no longer fits new requirements. It's not a problem to update your schema.

[@mahendranath2504]

this is a lot of clear content on how to schema our mongo, I have been checking about this topic for a long, but I have a question , in SQL we have partials if DB is big or sharding , do we have such thing here

[@extremespartan117]

Fantastic and straightforward presentation! Thank you sir!

[@JoeKarlsson]

Oh my gosh! Thank you so much!

[@officialgrasptechnology1804]

Thanks for the vid, now I need someone opinion. Am build a e-commerce store to sell clothing but am wonder if I should put all the product variants in the same document or reference it since as each product have more than one variants. Max properly be arround 10 variants and I only need the data to display on the home page as in "2 images,price and name". What's your guys opinion on this? And what about the query if I only need 2 images,name and retail price on the landing page.

[@JoeKarlsson]

Depends on how you will use it. Are you planning on showing all variants on your product detail page? If yes, it might be a good idea to embed it since you don't have very many sub variants. Does that help/make sense? 🥰🥰🥰

[@finalfantasy7820]

I came from your blog post where this video wasn't shown properly. You might want to fix it, cheers.

[@JoeKarlsson]

Thanks for the heads up

[@joaquindelprado133]

this is a really nice video!! thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge it's help me a lot

[@JoeKarlsson]

Yay! Thank you so much! I'm so glad that it's useful :D

[@harrisfpv]

That was great content!!! Answered many questions.

[@JoeKarlsson]

So glad it helped! :D

[@YoloMonstaaa]

You're an amazing teacher. Thank you.

[@JoeKarlsson]

Thank you! 🥺🥰👑

[@arunkutz]

Very Informative . Thank you for this video.

[@JoeKarlsson]

My pleasure!

[@premprakash7981]

Awesome Explanation. You have nailed it

[@JoeKarlsson]

Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@gompro]

Thank you for bringing up a really cool video!

[@JoeKarlsson]

Yay! So glad you liked it!

[@jasonbraithwaite9204]

Excellent video, very well explained 👍

[@andrew-ni1lb]

Dude, thanks, I have enjoyed your explanations!

[@edwardmike7523]

Thanks for the explanations, very clear .☺

[@dwhlab5436]

Such a amazing video .. many thanks .. great work.. cheers :)

[@JoeKarlsson]

Thank you!

[@ubermansch4871]

you deserve 1 million subscribers

[@polyglotathlete]

one of the best explanations, thanks from Bolivia :D

[@JoeKarlsson]

Oh my gosh! So glad it's useful!

[@knightx9405]

you are simply the BEST BEST BEST bru!!

[@JoeKarlsson]

I got chu

[@ayushkushwaha171]

Thanks for the video Joe

[@JoeKarlsson]

Oh my gosh! I am so glad you enjoyed it!

[@pedropalma3748]

Great presentation, loved it. Keep them coming😊

[@omadoyeabraham219]

Absolutely amazing explanation 👌

[@BiharGaurav]

Instead of referencing can I keep just list of id of another document and just query those specific ids? I mean what will be the performance in that case?

[@anudeepananth]

Alright the information shared here is gold....

[@t_kien]

I'm newbie and I found this video is amazing, now I can do it.

[@blackarrow9100]

Can WE have 2 schema in the same collection ? Like two type of user user1 and user2 in collection users ???

[@JoeKarlsson]

Absolutely! Google "Polymorphic Pattern" for more information

[@davidtorres5012]

Awesome! Great explanation

[@soyebganja8632]

Many thanks:)

[@asdfasdfasdfasdf219]

Best f*cking video I found so far. Liked and shared in LinkedIn. It could be good to add a sample for rule #2.

[@quasarkid4256]

I’m really glad I watched this video thanks a lot