MongoDB performance with growing data structure

Question

Let\'s say we are designing a new system and have decided to use MongoDB as the primary database. The data schema is very similar to a blog with [growing] comments.

Answer 1

To add to what Thilo said above, the reason to "not embed fields that have unbound growth" is because this type of document size expansion can cause MongoDB to have to move the document if it exceeds the current space allocated to it. You can read more about this in the Padding Factor section of the documentation.

Those types of moves are relatively expensive, especially if they happen frequently. Therefore limiting the size (essentially bounding that growth) of the comments equivalent in your main collection (most recent X etc.) and perhaps even pre-populating that document field (essentially manual padding) to reduce the moves caused by comment additions/changes may well be worth it for you.