MongoDB Links

Recently, I've been doing a lot of research into MongoDB in preparation for a talk at Sitecore Symposium.  Here are some useful resources I've come across:

First Steps

• try.mongodb.org is an online tutorial that teaches basic syntax in about 15 minutes.   
• The MongoDB  download page.  MongoDB is open source, and straightforward to install.  
• A walkthrough of getting MongoDB installed with Sitecore 7.5.

MongoDB Syntax

• The bios collection, is a useful data set for exploring querying syntax.  I will use this to show querying in my talk.
• The official MongoDB querying tutorial. 
• An SQL to MongoDB conversion chart.
• And a few noteworthy features:
• $elemMatch to specify array elements that meet multiple conditions.
• $ and $slice projection operators.  Both help filter returned array elements.
• Regex support, which leverages indexes, and is especially efficient for "prefix" queries that specify the start of a string value.
• Simulating multi-document transactions.  A good read, gets you thinking in advanced MongoDB terms.

Aggregation

MongoDB offers two approaches to aggregation, a JavaScript based Map/Reduce API, and an aggregation pipeline, introduced with version 2.2. From my own experience, the pipeline is a lot more powerful and easy to work with.

• There's a lot of material on the aggregation pipeline. For my money, the best place to get started is the zipcode tutorial.  
• Map Reduce examples.
• Aggregation feature comparison chart.

Indexing

Like QueryAnalyzer's "Display Execution Plan", MongoDB has functionality to explore whether a query is being executed efficiently, or whether indexes need to be added.  This is done through the ".explain()" method.

• Evaluating query performance with .explain().
• An overview of the different types of indexes MongoDB supports.  A few worth noting: TimeToLive (autodeletes records), geospatial.

Server Configuration

• MongoDB has a range of security features, including authentication, role-based security, and SSL support. A good overview can be found in the security checklist. 
• Any production implementation should use replication. This is discussed here, and there is a tutorial here.
• Sharding of course is the big deal about MongoDB.  I discussed why this is a driver for Sitecore's move to MongoDB in a recent post on the Velir blog. Here is MongoDB's introduction, and a tutorial to get your feet wet.

Courses

There are some excellent courses on Pluralsight.

• Introduction to MongoDB focuses on MongoDB from the server side, with a focus on topics like replication and architecture.
• Using MongoDB with ASP.NET MVC shows how to build an application in C# using MongoDB, and is an excellent source for understanding how to code with the C# driver. 

Okay, that should get you started. Happy coding!