CAIS Modernizes Its Web Experience with MongoDB Atlas

The California Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) is dedicated to supporting and strengthening the independent school community in California. Over the past 80 years, the organization has grown to a network of more than 230 schools and 93,000 students and counting.

CAIS' website serves as an information hub that serves multiple users — schools, CAIS staff, and the public — with different access points. It hosts a searchable database that showcases member schools for prospective students and families and a job board for educators. However, CAIS was outgrowing the third-party technology that supported its website, and the organization needed to upgrade in order to better support schools, parents, and the CAIS staff. When Michael Dy, Technology Systems Manager at CAIS, joined the organization in 2018, he, along with leadership, decided to explore other options.

“Our previous database solution, which had served CAIS well for many years, had some limitations,” said Dy. “Indexing capabilities, maintenance procedures, resiliency, and data integrity needed to be reconsidered. We wanted to expand on our indexing features, especially on high-traffic pages like our job board.”

The website sometimes became unavailable when the database needed to be compacted and repaired. The previous search functionality had some limitations and led to some varied results. It also struggled to handle high volumes of concurrent users. Some users experienced lag when searching for job opportunities. CAIS wanted to change this in order to better serve job seekers and schools working to fill positions.

To make these changes, CAIS needed a new database to achieve the following:

• handle its growing data needs
• provide advanced search capabilities
• integrate seamlessly with its technology stack
• enhance data integrity and privacy controls

However, CAIS could not find an out-of-the-box solution that met its complex needs. As the primary developer, Dy also required a solution that was simple to learn, implement, and maintain. That is when he discovered MongoDB.

Dy began to read resources and watch webinars on MongoDB University to familiarize himself with MongoDB. Enabled by these resources, he completely redesigned CAIS' digital foundation into a modern, scalable architecture powered by MongoDB Atlas, a suite of cloud database and data services. This service seamlessly integrates with CAIS' technology stack.

MongoDB Atlas enables streamlined development processes, more efficient coding, and faster implementation of features. With an intuitive document-based format, CAIS can model data structures and modify documents quickly, saving time and effort in the development process.

Michael Dy, Technology Systems Manager, CAIS

Michael Dy, Technology Systems Manager, CAIS

MongoDB Atlas has improved the user experience for CAIS' members and website visitors. “The implementation of MongoDB has significantly enhanced our system,” said Dy. “The introduction of previously unavailable features, such as autocomplete functionality and wildcard search capabilities, serve as clear indicators of MongoDB’s impact.”

Looking forward, Dy is learning about the benefits of utilizing generative AI (gen AI). He is also considering the use of Atlas Vector Search, which helps to build intelligent applications powered by semantic search and gen AI using a full-featured vector database.

“MongoDB’s introduction of Atlas Vector Search, which integrates AI-powered search and personalization into applications on MongoDB Atlas, is of particular interest,” said Dy. “We envision exploring these technologies to further enhance our capabilities and provide even more tailored experiences for our member schools and their users.”