MongoDB - is DBREF necessary?

Question

Using the DBREF datatype in MongoDB, a document may look like as shown below. But having the $ref field in every row feels redundant as every row obviously poin

Answer 1

Unless you use driver specific methods for accessing dbref, it should be unnecessary.

In cases where you're managing the join manually (i.e. you know which other collection to "join" to), storing just the ObjectId is enough.