Is MongoDB Open Source

Is MongoDB Open Source?

Yes, MongoDB is Open Source. You can download community version of MongoDB and do not need to pay for the license.  Let’s understand in details about MongoDB and Open Source.

What is Open Source?

Open Source software is a software development community which accepts modified, enhanced or bug fixed codes from the developer. The source code of open source software or projects is publicly accessible. Any developer can modify and share its design. You do not have to pay for the license to use any open source software for personal or professional use. Open source community celebrates and embrace principles of open exchange, the rapid development of software, collaborative participant of developer, meritocracy, transparency and community-oriented development for different projects and products. The motive and vision of open source community are to both benefit programmers and non-programmers. The success of an open source initiative depends on:

1. Raising awareness and adoption of your project
2. Keeping your forums alive with information, questions, and challenges
3. Organizing real-life events for distributed communities
4. Extending the understanding—and value—of open source software and development models, all toward on a common goal

What is MongoDB?

MongoDB is an open source document-oriented database. MongoDB is a NoSQL database. MongoDB is written in C++.  MongoDB is a free and cross-platform database. Different features of MongoDB are:

1. MongoDB is a distributed database.
2. MongoDB is a high availability NoSQL database.
3. MongoDB supports horizontal scaling
4. Geographic distribution is built in and easy to use for MongoDB.

MongoDB stores data in flexible format JSON-like documents it means fields can vary from document to document and data structure can be changed over time.  Instead of using tables and rows as in relational databases, the MongoDB architecture is made up of collections and documents. Each database contains collections which in turn contains documents. Each document can be different with the varying number of fields. The size and content of each document can be different from each other. MongoDB is a highly scalable and performance-oriented database.

• Collection:

It is termed as the group of documents in MongoDB and similar to the table in Relational Database Management System. The collection doesn’t enforce any schema and exits within in a single database. Documents within a collection can be of different types.

• Document:

The document has dynamin schema and it is defined into key-value pairs. The dynamic schema in MongoDB means that documents in the same collection do not need to have the same set of fields or structure and common fields in a collection’s documents and it may hold different types of data.

Open Source License – MongoDB

All open source products do not share the same licenses. Different software’s have different licenses and agreements. MongoDB created and owns the copyright to its code. They are two versions of MongoDB.

• Enterprise Version :

You need to pay for the license for business use. Copyrights of source code are with the company. MongoDB is a typical post-relational modern database. They have added security features, in-memory storage engine, administration, authentication features and monitoring capabilities through Ops Manager.

• Community Version :

You can download for free and can work freely. You don’t have to pay for the license. You can’t make any changes to the source code.

MongoDB benefits from Open Source:

MongoDB is a leader database in NoSQL. MongoDB open source is widely accepted by the different community. Open source products in the enterprise and express editions are becoming increasingly common. Thanks to the interest of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay publicly praising the advantages of adopting open source products as higher scale. The challenges arise about the growth of the company beyond providing support to the customer when the product is free. MongoDB Open Source is taking this challenge head-on and they have launched new consulting arm.  They are doing something different in terms of its approach, which they hope will make their business profitable and sustainable for the longer term. MongoDB Open Source has proprietary differentiated products around their open source core product. When they sell a subscription, the buyer is buying not just support, but they’re also buying access to these proprietary tools. These proprietary tools make easier and safer for MongoDB. This is how they are bringing more revenue being open source.

Why MongoDB?

• Load balancing :

MongoDB uses the concept of sharding to scale horizontally by splitting data across multiple MongoDB instances. Sharding takes place when different parts of a data table are spread across multiple servers. MongoDB can run over multiple servers, balancing the load and/or duplicating data to keep the system up and running in case of hardware failure. Hashed-based sharding randomly distributes new entries across all the available servers.

• Document-oriented:

MongoDB is a NoSQL document-oriented type of database It stores data in documents. This makes MongoDB very flexible and adaptable to real business world situation and requirements.

• Ad hoc queries :

MongoDB supports searching by field, range queries, and regular expression searches. Queries can be made to return specific fields within documents.

• Indexing :

Indexes support the efficient execution of queries in MongoDB.  Indexes can be created to improve the performance of searches within MongoDB. MongoDB can use the index to limit the number of documents it must inspect. Indexes are special data structures that store a small portion of the collection’s data set in an easy to traverse form.

• Replication :

A replica set in MongoDB is a group of MongoDB processes that maintain the same data set. MongoDB can provide high availability with replica sets for the basics for all production deployment. Replication provides redundancy and increases data availability.

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 Conclusion – Is MongoDB Open Source:

MongoDB is an open source NoSQL database. There are two editions of MongoDB. One is MongoDB Open Source and this edition is freely available as part of open source community but for while other edition, you need to pay for the license. This edition has some advanced features comparing free edition. MongoDB Open Source is one of the leading NoSQL database and widely accepted by lots of professionals. Ideally, I can say for developers to prefer MongoDB Open Source.

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