MongoDB is a modern and general purpose database platform. And it has released version 3.6 which includes a hefty of improvements.
MongoDB has used the term "speed" to characterize version 3.6, with "speed to develop," "speed to scale," and "speed to insight." What it means is that, MongoDB 3.6 has richer features for developers and administrators, and enhanced BI connectors for analysts to help them get their jobs done faster.
The productivity enhancement should fill the gaps for features that would be expected in any enterprise database.
"MongoDB was created by developers, for developers to provide a modern database designed for today's highly sophisticated applications. This latest release delivers key innovations that once again raise the bar for what developers should demand from their database, enabling them to focus their time on building compelling applications that transform their businesses," said Dev Ittycheria, President and CEO, MongoDB.
"With MongoDB 3.6, it's now easier and faster to build always-on applications that react in real time to changes in data streamed across distributed systems. And with new and enhanced management and security features, developers get the freedom and confidence to run MongoDB in the most demanding environments to support mission-critical applications."
Speed To Develop
MongoDB 3.6 helps organizations to move their data faster, making work more productive. The key advancements include:
- Change streams: Enable developers to build reactive web, mobile and IoT applications that can view, filter and act on data changes as they occur in the database.
- Retryable writes: Moving the complexity of handling systems failures from the application to the database.
- MongoDB Compass: Allows users to easily analyze and understand database schema, includes query auto-complete, query history and table views.
- MongoDB Compass Community: Provides developers with a new, no-cost, GUI alternative to the MongoDB shell.
Speed To Scale
Version 3.6 makes it easier for operations teams to deploy and run massively scalable, secure, always-on global applications built on MongoDB's native distributed systems facilities. Advancements include:
- MongoDB Ops Manager: Allows users to manage, optimize, secure and back up globally distributed clusters, using Data Explorer, Real-Time Performance Panel and Performance Advisor.
- Schema governance with JSON schema: Allows developers and ops teams combine the flexibility of the document model with true data conformance and validation capabilities.
- MongoDB Atlas: The database as a service for MongoDB gives users access to all of the core features of MongoDB 3.6 and runs on all major public clouds.
- Cross region replication: Allows MongoDB Atlas to span on multiple cloud provider regions, maintaining continuous availability as well as providing optimal customer experience.
Speed To Insight
MongoDB improved the ability of data analysts and business intelligence (BI) to drive real-time actions, using version 3.6. Advancements include:
- The aggregation pipeline: Allows users to perform real-time analytics directly in the database, enhanced with more expressive queries.
- MongoDB's Connector for BI: Enables use of MongoDB as a data source in SQL-based analytics and data visualization tools.
One the biggest security news stories in 2017 was of a ransomware variant targeting improperly secured MongoDB.
Hackers were able to hack into 10,500 systems running the MongoDB database software, remote wipe their databases and leave a ransom note. It was said that around 25 percent of all internet-connected MongoDB databases have been hit.
It happened when MongoDB users have accidentally left their databases exposed to the internet without any authentication.
In MongoDB 3.6, founder and CTO Eliot Horowitz explained that MongoDB no longer have an unsafe configuration out of the box.
"On 3.6, localhost only is enabled by default. If you start MongoDB, you have to explicitly turn on networking. If you don’t explicitly turn it on, that entire method of doing ransomware goes away," he explained. But if users want to connect their database to the internet, they need to "consciously" turn on authentication. "We can’t help you at that point," he said.
MongoDB 3.6 also adds wire protocol compression to traffic between the client and the database. With compression configurable for client traffic, intra-node communications, indexes, and disk storage, version 3.6 offers greater network, memory, and storage efficiency.
For MongoDB users, this security improvement is worth mentioning, and can save them some headaches.
As a whole, the enhancements in 3.6 are critical for MongoDB to up its enterprise game. Compared to other databases that have reached out beyond their original aim and added features such as SQL query support, MongoDB has stuck to its origins.
