What are the advantages of using a schema-free database like MongoDB compared to a relational database?

Question

I\'m used to using relational databases like MySQL or PostgreSQL, and combined with MVC frameworks such as Symfony, RoR or Django, and I think it works great.

But la

Answer 1

Here are some of the advantages of MongoDB for building web applications:

1. A document-based data model. The basic unit of storage is analogous to JSON, Python dictionaries, Ruby hashes, etc. This is a rich data structure capable of holding arrays and other documents. This means you can often represent in a single entity a construct that would require several tables to properly represent in a relational db. This is especially useful if your data is immutable.
2. Deep query-ability. MongoDB supports dynamic queries on documents using a document-based query language that's nearly as powerful as SQL.
3. No schema migrations. Since MongoDB is schema-free, your code defines your schema.
4. A clear path to horizontal scalability.

You'll need to read more about it and play with it to get a better idea. Here's an online demo:

http://try.mongodb.org/