MongoDB At AWS re:Invent 2019

AWS re:Invent 2019 is just around the corner. If you’ve been in past years, you know there is always a lot going on – and if you haven’t, well, you’re about to find out!

There are a couple of general tips worth bearing in mind to survive a week in Vegas – stay hydrated, get plenty of sleep, that sort of thing. More specifically to getting the most out of re:Invent, you should already have planned out your schedule for the week. Remember that popular sessions fill up fast, so plan alternates that you can go to if your first pick is full. Many breakouts also have catch-up sessions at the end of the week, so you may be luckier the second time around.

To help you make the most of your time at re:Invent, we built a page to help you find all the good MongoDB events, whether those are formal breakouts, events in our booth, or party times after hours. Here are some of the highlights.

Breakout sessions

"Breakout Sessions"

There are three breakouts that show how to address common problems using MongoDB, whether it’s using Amazon Textract to ingest unstructured documents, leveraging client-side field-level encryption to keep your (and your users’) data secure, or analyzing Amazon S3 documents in place without the need to transfer data or define schema.

The Expo

On top of the formal agenda, do make time to visit the Expo in the Venetian. Yes, this is where the sponsor booths are, but you should be after more than just swag! Good vendor booths will give you the chance to talk to knowledgeable people about the particular problem you are trying to solve, and even get hands-on with their technology so you can get a feel for whether it could be a good fit for you.

Ease of use is key to everything we do at MongoDB, democratising access to data. The document model makes MongoDB the best platform for developers, since it matches the way that data is represented within applications. As part of the MongoDB booth, the Atlas Challenge will let you get hands-on with MongoDB Atlas, our fully managed, global cloud database service. Experience the power of the document model for yourself while carrying out real tasks against a live cluster. You'll configure Atlas database triggers, set up alerts, and interact with Stitch and Charts in a race against other re:Invent attendees to win a Nintendo Switch Lite! There will also be experts on hand to help you and answer your questions, whether about the Atlas Challenge exercises or about MongoDB’s platform in general.

"The Expo Center Booth"

But the Venetian booth isn’t the only place to interact with MongoDB’s experts and technology. Don’t miss MongoDB’s booth in the Quad at the Aria, a “Builder’s Fest” inspired space dedicated to AI, ML, and IoT. At MongoDB’s booth in the Quad you can design your own temporary tattoos using a collaborative drawing app built using Realm, the client-side database, and edge to cloud sync technology, and MongoDB Atlas. Users will be paired with tattoo artists from Inkbox, the temporary tattoo company, to collaboratively create a custom tattoo which can be downloaded, shared, and ultimately mailed to you!

Beyond the Database

"Beyond the Database"

Beyond the core database, the MongoDB Cloud data platform is rounded out by complementary features to give developers all the capabilities they need. MongoDB Atlas, our fully-managed database as a service, is the core component, running across 18 Amazon AWS regions, as well as other cloud providers around the world, giving developers the greatest flexibility and geographic reach. And of course, being a DBaaS means it's easy, full-featured, and secure, without requiring huge ops overhead.

Serverless represents the next stage in the industry's migration to a more streamlined, managed, agile infrastructure. MongoDB Stitch is a serverless platform which accelerates application development with simple, secure access to data and services from the client – getting your apps to market faster while reducing operational costs and effort.

MongoDB’s full-text search makes it easier than ever to get score-ranked results for text-based data, integrating Apache Lucene, a powerful text search library and the most popular open-source language-focused search project in the world. Combined with built-in query operators, default score ranking and traditional MongoDB-native functionality means that with Atlas Full-Text Search you get the flexibility of MongoDB combined with the speed of Lucene.

Mobile development is a particular minefield, with variable latency, unreliable connectivity, and the possibility that the user or the mobile OS may simply shut your app down at any time. MongoDB Realm offers a new way to work with data on mobile, abstracting much of the complexity and letting developers focus on application functionality.

Finally, gathering data and running operational tasks is important, but soon users also need to run more strategic analytics queries. In the booth, we will also be showing the visualization capabilities of Charts, including its ability to create embedded live charts for use in your own website or mobile app. A recent addition to MongoDB’s analytics capabilities is Atlas Data Lake, which enables users to query data stored in S3 buckets directly, without the need to import it somewhere else or apply a schema first. By using this tool, users can make decisions based on the most recent relevant information, without worrying that they might be looking at stale data. Taken together, these analytics capabilities enable even more people to take advantage of the power of MongoDB, even without requiring development experience or support.

Party On

It wouldn’t be Vegas without at least one good party, and you won’t want to miss MongoDB’s Popup Playground Party on Wednesday night, co-sponsored by Confluent! Check out the details and request your ticket. The fun will include a glowing ball pit, DIY graffiti walls, and Vegas' hottest DJs, including The Hood Internet. See you there?

"Afterall it is Las Vegas"

If you’re looking for something fun to do on Tuesday night then look no further than the restaurant reception with MongoDB, Gremlin, and Datadog in Sugarcane at 6:00 PM! Learn how we all three companies are elevating efficiency in monitoring, databases, and failure mode testing to provide value to organizations - all over drinks!

So there’s a taste of what to expect from MongoDB at AWS re:Invent 2019. See you in Las Vegas!

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December 2, 2019
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Empower Modern App Developers with Document Databases

Across industries, business success depends on a company’s ability to deliver new digital experiences through software. The speed at which a company can develop and deploy a new application with innovative features is a direct lever on business outcomes. Given the vital role developers play in the success of your business, it stands to reason that equipping them with the tools to maximize their productivity is in your best interest. Unfortunately, many organizations are unaware of the tax they’re placing on their development teams by using a relational database. While the relational database has been a bedrock for data-driven applications for 50 years, it was developed in an era before the internet and is a poor fit as the foundation of today’s web and mobile applications. Document databases, which have emerged over the past decade, have cemented themselves as the most popular and widely used alternative to the tabular model found in traditional relational databases. Document databases have become so powerful that even relational databases are trying to emulate them. Built around JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)–like documents, document databases are intuitive for developers to use. Instead of the rigid row-and-column structure of the relational model, document databases map documents directly to objects in code, which is how coders naturally think of and work with data. Let’s break down the key advantages to document databases in building modern applications. We’ll see why the document model’s flexibility eliminates the complex intergroup dependencies that have traditionally slowed developers down. The limitations of the relational database model Relational databases add complexity to a developer’s workload, severely hampering the velocity of work. The rigid row-and-column structure creates a mismatch between the way developers think of code and data, and how they need to store it. 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The emergence of robust development frameworks, which abstracted away underlying complexity, and the rise of DevOps led organizations to consolidate developer functions. The new generation of full-stack developers wanted databases that better addressed their applications’ requirements and their ways of working with data. The founders of MongoDB recognized a need for a modern database solution while at the adtech giant DoubleClick in 2007. They still were unable to scale to the 400,000 transactions per second the business required due to the constraints of the relational model. These challenges inspired them to create a new, modern, general-purpose database. This database could address the shortcomings of the relational data model and offer a solution that developers actually wanted to use. The result was a horizontally scalable, document-based NoSQL database called MongoDB. The document database model in general, and MongoDB more specifically, addresses the limitations of relational databases in several notable ways: Intuitive data model: The documents at the center of document databases have a universal data format. JSON is a lightweight, language-independent, and human-readable format that has become a widely used standard for storing and exchanging data. These documents map directly to data structures in popular programming languages so there is no need for the additional mapping layer often used with relational databases. Because data that is accessed together is stored together, there is less code to write; developers don’t need to decompose data across tables or run joins. Flexible schema: These JSON-like documents are flexible. Each document can have its own fields, and there’s no need to pre-define the schema in the database. It can be modified at any time. That flexibility enhances developer agility. 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Development teams can accommodate most of their use cases in a single data model and database The document data model can help your developers overcome the limitations of the relational model while improving their productivity and velocity. Allowing them to minimize the undifferentiated work of maintaining their infrastructure and to focus on meeting demanding user expectations. As a result, they can deliver better, more innovative applications faster than before. Click here to read the original article published on The New Stack.

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