NoSQL databases have seen rise in popularity in the last decade. In today’s world of real time web applications, huge amount of data is being generated with mobile and embedded devices. Traditional relational databases (like Oracle, MySQL, etc.) are not suitable for strings. The processing of such data is also difficult as they have fixed and predefined schema, and are not scalable. NOSQL databases have flexible schema and are stored in distributed manner on a large number of community servers.

NOSQL databases are classified on the basis of organization of data. MongoDB is a popular Document Store NOSQL database. Fundamental constituent of a MongoDB database is called a document. A document is a collection of key-value pairs stored in JSON format. More than one documents are stored in a collection. A collection can be considered as analogous to a table in any relational database, and a Document as row in a table. However, it should be noted that since MongoDB is schema less, number of key-value pairs in each document of a Collection need not be the same.

MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. It is a general-purpose, distributed document based database. It is available in enterprise as well as community edition. Latest version of Community version for Windows operating system can be downloaded from https://fastdl.mongodb.org/win32/mongodb-win32-x86_64-2012plus-4.2.6-signed.msi.

Install MongoDB in a folder of your choice and start the server with the following command−

D:mongodbbin>mongod

Server is now ready for incoming connection requests at port 27017. MongoDB databases are stored in bin/data directory. This location can be changed by –dbpath option in above command.

In another command terminal, start MongoDB console with the following command −

D:mongodbbin>mongo

MongoDB prompt is similar to what we normally see in MySQL or SQLite terminal. All database operations such as creating database, inserting a document, updating and deleting as well as retrieval of documents can be done from within the console.

E:mongodbbin>mongo
MongoDB shell version v4.0.6
connecting to: mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/?gssapiServiceName=mongodb
Implicit session: session { "id" : UUID("0d848b11-acf7-4d30-83df-242d1d7fa693") }
MongoDB server version: 4.0.6
---
>

Default database in use is test.

> db
Test

With ”use” command any other database is set as current. If the named database does not exist, new one is created.

> use mydb
switched to db mydb

Please refer to our detailed tutorial on MongoDB at https://www.tutorialspoint.com/mongodb/index.htm.