SQL Databases vs MongoDB: A Brief Analysis
In the uncertain land of today’s technology, there are always new technology tools developing and replacing the old ones. SQL databases and MongoDB are no exception to the statement made above, ever since the popularity and usage of MongoDB has been increasing slowly but steadily, it has lead us to some questions over here. Will MongoDB, a relatively newer database completely replace the forever developer’s favorite SQL database? Is it better? Is there potential? Let’s break this down in this article.
Before we go in depth about them and analyze each of these databases, let’s actually understand what these databases are and how they shape today’s development processes.
A QUICK INTRO TO SOME TERMINOLOGIES
DATABASE:
A database is an organized collection of data that are of high importance to an organization, which is stored in a computer system.
DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM:
The database management system (DBMS), a collection of programs that allows its users to manipulate, report and represent data.
DATABASE SYSTEM:
A database, DBMS and related applications can be collectively called as a database system.
QUERY LANGUAGES:
Query languages are computer-interpretable protocols or instructions that requests and retrieves data from database by sending queries.
For this article, this brief explanation of these terminologies shall be enough. Want to learn more? Here are some helpful resources:
Now, Let’s dive into this.
WHAT ARE SQL DATABASES?
SQL stands for Structured query language, a standard language for accessing and manipulating databases. SQL can execute queries in order to retrieve/manipulate relevant data. Databases that operate or use SQL are known as SQL databases.
SQL can select, insert, update and delete records in a database using simple syntax, creating a straight /direct approach and really falling into the category that we can name as “simple and effective”. Other than the previously mentioned operations SQL can perform, it also gives it’s users the ability to create new databases, new tables, stored procedures, views and even set permissions on these tables, procedures and views. SQL databases utilizes these operations and in turn offers high performance and availability for managing database.
But however, to use data from a database in a website, you would need a RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) database program and a server-side scripting language like PHP, alongside with SQL and other front-end styling elements.
WHAT IS MONGODB?
MongoDB is one of the upraising NoSQL databases which stores data in BSON structure or to keep it simple, a document-type model. MongoDB also provides high performance, scalability and availability for managing the databases.
This document data model is an efficient way to store and retrieve data. With a great user experience for developers and also representing data with natural clusters variably over time, MongoDB has surely gained it’s popularity for the right reasons.
MongoDB is an open source that supports rapid iterative development and also enables users to store, manage data with text and time series dimensions.
I just sneakily dropped a new term before, didn’t I?
Well, on that note, what is NoSQL?
Let me brief you on it.
SQL vs NoSQL
Wherein SQL databases, the data managed is structured in forms of tables, procedures and views, In NoSQL the data in unstructured and massive. There are no uses of tables or any form of structure. Either way, the underlying purposes of these databases are the same, which is managing data.
ANALYSIS OF SQL DB VS MONGODB
-Provided by Nikhilesh Ram, web developer, SCRO https://medium.com/@nr6994
Here are some common differences that can be found:
- MySQL uses a structured query language (SQL) for entry, like many relational databases. The MongoDB Query Language (MQL), developed for efficient use by developers, is used by MongoDB.
- SQL supports structured data in form of tables whereas MongoDB is used to store unstructured data in BSON format.
- MongoDB supports various drivers like DART, GO, JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, etc. whereas SQL supports .NET, PHP, Python, JAVA, etc.
- The schemas in SQL DBs are fixed whereas in MongoDB it is flexible. (A schema database is the skeleton structure that represents the logical view of entire database.)
- Queries in SQL are very much slower as compared to NoSQL DBs like MongoDB because queries for a single data or object might require joins to take place which could be very expensive with large data in DBs .
- As MongoDB documents map naturally to modern, object-oriented programming languages, development is simplified.
- Since joins are not possible in MongoDB, hence the concept of foreign keys is also not there.
- MongoDB servers are compatible with windows, Linux and mac whereas SQL servers are only compatible with windows machines.
- MongoDB is open source and SQL DB is commercial.
Now that we have pointed out some differences, let’s move on further into the discussion.
Let’s discuss some pros and cons.
THE PROS AND CONS
SQL DATABASE
PROS
- Easy to write- In SQL the basic keywords are SELECT, INSERT, INTO, UPDATE which are pretty self-explanatory and direct and also, the syntactical rules are not complex in SQL.
- Large amount of data is retrieved quickly and efficiently.
- It has a table-based schema
- A Mature technology, known by a lot of developers and used regularly.
- Great support and user experience.
CONS
- Although it makes retrieving data easy even for complex queries, sometimes it can be restrictive.
- Changing the structure can create a lot of confusion
- Requires predefined schemas
- Difficult to Scale
MONGODB
PROS
- Has a dynamic schema
- Data stored in many ways such as document-oriented, column-oriented, etc.
- Flexibility- documents can be created without having a defined structure.
- Large scalability making it more powerful
- Horizontally scalable
- High speed
CONS
- A newer database, a lot of unanswered questions
- No standard schema definition
- No join (A JOIN clause is used to combine rows from two or more tables, based on a related column between them)
- Memory limitation- MongoDB needs more storage than other popular databases. Although the introduction of WiredTiger in latest versions has solved this issue, It is not ideal in most applications.
- MongoDB only supports ACID transactions for a single document.(ACID is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors and other mishaps.)
- In RDBMSs, We have the luxury of triggers, which has saved us in many cases. This luxury is missing in MongoDB.
THE FINAL STATEMENT
By going over the pros and cons it’s no hidden fact that the databases each have their own fair share of drawbacks.
This leads us to state that,
The choice between SQL databases or MongoDB are need-specific. By need-specific, what I mean is for example, let’s take a scenario of creating a portal for your organization which is exclusively available for your organization’s members only. In this case, using a SQL database for storing and retrieving the data is ideal. As mentioned before we can make use of the “simple and effectiveness” of SQL. On the other hand, let’s take an example for an internet-based application, here MongoDB is ideal in storing massive data, quickly and efficiently using BSON.
As developers, the above scenario is nothing new to us, we are always encouraged to learn new & upcoming technologies but when it comes to putting them in use, we analyze situations and problems that we face and use appropriate technologies to solve them.
Coming to the question we started the article with,
Will MongoDB replace SQL Completely?
The answer for now is No, MongoDB will forever grow in terms of users in the upcoming years but however, the easy to write syntax of SQL, support of advanced analytics and joins may make any user to prefer SQL database over MongoDB.
MongoDB is definitely a strong and powerful database and many will shift from SQL databases to MongoDB in the upcoming years, but it won’t completely eradicate SQL databases with such drawbacks.
Although MongoDB is easily scalable, flexible and simple to use, and will stand as better in most cases, SQL databases are long established with fixed schema design and a set structure. They are exceptionally ideal for multi-row transactions that are being built for a relational structure.
WHAT WE DISCUSSED?
This article gave you an brief idea on some simple but basic terminologies, we briefed about the two databases, pointed out some common noticeable differences, went over pros and cons and at last came up with our final statement and the reasoning for the statement.
Hopefully you found this article enlightening and maybe this article will play some role in analyzing which database you need to incorporate in your next upcoming project!
Credits and Contribution:
A huge thanks to Nikhilesh Ram for his contribution of ANALYSIS OF SQL DB VS MONGODB in order to make this article more enlightening!
Proof Read by- Nikhilesh Ram, Web developer at SCRO, (https://medium.com/@nr6994) and Everly Precia (https://everlyprecia.medium.com/)
Written by: Everly Precia (https://everlyprecia.medium.com/)
