The Data Model

Abstract

In the previous chapter, you learned how to install MongoDB on two commonly used platforms (Windows and Linux), as well as how to extend the database with some additional drivers. In this chapter, you will shift your attention from the operating system and instead examine the general design of a MongoDB database. Specifically, you’ll learn what collections are, what documents look like, how indexes work and what they do, and finally, when and where to reference data instead of embedding it. We touched on some of these concepts briefly in Chapter 1, but in this chapter, we’ll explore them in more detail. Throughout this chapter, you will see code examples designed to give you a good feeling for the concepts being discussed. Do not worry too much about the commands you’ll be looking at, however, because they will be discussed extensively in Chapter 4.