Encryption at Rest | MongoDB Blog

MongoDB
January 20, 2016
#Cloud

Encryption at rest is a new feature that is available for MongoDB Enterprise when using the WiredTiger Storage Engine. Although you can evaluate MongoDB Enterprise using the evaluation agreement, you would need a MongoDB Enterprise subscription for each server to use it in production.

With a MongoDB Enterprise Advanced subscription, you can enable encryption at rest via Cloud Manager (using Automation). You would need to pass the encryption parameters, as mentioned in Configure Encryption through the The Cloud Manager Advanced Options.

Please note that as the system key is external to the server (i.e. kept separate from the data and the database keys), and therefore still requires external management. Please refer to Key Management for more details on this. If you are interested in MongoDB Enterprise Advanced subscription, please contact a MongoDB Account Executive.

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Getting Started with MongoDB Compass

MongoDB’s flexible schema and rich document structure allow developers to quickly build applications with rich data structures. However, this flexibility can also make it difficult to understand the structure of the data in an existing database. Until now, if you wanted to understand the structure of your data, you would have to use the MongoDB shell to issue queries and view data at the command line. There has to be a better way -- enter MongoDB Compass . What is MongoDB Compass? MongoDB 3.2 introduces MongoDB Compass -- a graphical tool that allows you to easily analyse and understand your database schema, as well as allowing you to visually construct queries, all without having to know MongoDB’s query syntax: MongoDB Compass was built to address 3 main goals: Schema discovery Data discovery Visual construction of queries Schema Discovery Compass displays the data types of fields in a collection’s schema. The example below is taken from a mock dataset that I use when test driving Compass. It reports that there are documents in the collection that contain a field last_login with the type date: Compass also displays a percentage breakdown for fields with varying data types across documents. In this example, 81% of documents store phone_no as a string, and the remaining 19% store it as a number: For sparse fields, where some documents omit a value, Compass displays the percentage of missing values as “undefined.” Here, the age field is missing in 40% of the sampled documents. This is exceptionally useful to understand whether your application is storing data the way that you expect it to. Imagine the case where you have a field showing a mix of strings and numbers - perhaps there is an application bug somewhere that has crept in and is storing data with a different type than it should be? Data Discovery Compass is able to show histograms to represent the data frequency and distribution within a collection. For example, here is a data set containing the age of users. We can see the minimum age is 16, the maximum age is 56 and the most popular age is late 30’s (the exact value is shown by hovering over the bar itself). Here’s another example using a field that stores names. Compass will display a random selection of string values for the field: Visual Construction of Queries Do you want an easier way to type out a MongoDB query? Charts in Compass are fully interactive. Clicking on a chart value or bar will automatically build a MongoDB query that matches the selected range in the interface. In the example below, clicking on the “JFK” bar builds a query matching all documents whose departureAirportFsCode field matches “JFK”: Clicking on other field values adds the field and range to the selection, creating a more complex query. Continuing with our example, we can select a particular flightId in addition to departures from JFK Airport. Once you hit the Apply button, Compass will execute the query and bring back the results! It’s as easy as it sounds. You can be building queries with a few clicks of a button in no time at all. One final thing to mention - we didn’t forget about the JSON. Documents can be examined in the document viewing pane. This can be expanded by clicking on the Document Viewer icon on the right-hand side of the page: I know you must be wondering - where can I get this thing?! Well, MongoDB Compass is available in the download center on mongodb.com . It comes included for production use with our subscriptions, both MongoDB Professional and MongoDB Enterprise Advanced. MongoDB Compass can also be used for free in a development environment. This is only version 1.0 of Compass - there is lots of great functionality to come. I’m super excited to be part of the Compass team and I can’t wait for the next set of releases. Give MongoDB Compass a try today. Download MongoDB Compass About the author - Sam Weaver Sam Weaver is the Product Manager for Developer Experience at MongoDB based in New York. Prior to MongoDB, he worked at Red Hat doing technical presales on Linux, Virtualisation, and Middleware. Originally from Cheltenham, England, he received his Bachelors in Computer Science from Cardiff University. Sam has also cycled from London to Paris, competed in several extreme sports tournaments such as ToughMudder, and swam with great white sharks.

January 20, 2016

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MongoDB Releases “Focus Mode” in Compass GUI

We’re excited to announce an improvement to the aggregation-building experience in MongoDB Compass. Compass already makes it easy to view and manage your MongoDB databases, and with the addition of Focus Mode you now have the option to dial in on specific stages within your aggregation pipeline. Overview MongoDB's Query API and Aggregation Pipelines enable easy retrieval and processing of data from collections. They also facilitate complex operations such as filtering, grouping, and transforming, making computation and analysis effortless. MongoDB Compass' intuitive interface simplifies the process of building aggregations by enabling developers to easily create, test, and refine aggregation pipelines, and the introduction of Focus Mode takes this a step further. When constructing pipelines, having to simultaneously view and consider multiple stages can make it challenging to analyze the impact of a specific stage, leading to increased cognitive load. Now, developers can toggle Focus Mode on stages, opening a view that focuses exclusively on the contents of the specific stage they are working on. This view can also be used to view sample input (before the aggregation stage is applied) and output (after the stage is applied) documents, aiding in the understanding, troubleshooting, and optimizing of the data pipeline. Developers can also switch between different stages by accessing a drop-down menu at the top of their screen. This makes identifying inefficiencies and optimizing performance easier, as well as providing deeper insights from the output documents for data-driven decision making. Focus Mode offers a streamlined and distraction-free environment for working with stages, improving the efficiency and precision of testing, debugging, and analyzing the impact of each stage on the data, ultimately simplifying the creation and management of pipelines. Conclusion The addition of Focus Mode is part of our continued refresh of the query and aggregation experience in Compass. These improvements are made possible thanks to the feedback of our developer community, so we encourage you to try out this new feature and let us know what you think! To learn more about Aggregation Pipeline Builder in Compass, visit our documentation .

March 21, 2023