Preface

I’ve been building production database-driven applications for about 10 years. I’ve worked with most of the usual relational databases (MSSQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL) and with some very interesting nonrelational databases (Freebase.com’s Graphd/MQL, Berkeley DB, MongoDB). MongoDB is at this point the system I enjoy working with the most, and choose for most projects. It sits somewhere at a crossroads between the performance and pragmatism of a relational system and the flexibility and expressiveness of a semantic web database. It has been central to my success in building some quite complicated systems in a short period of time.

I hope that after reading this book you will find MongoDB to be a pleasant database to work with, and one which doesn’t get in the way between you and the application you wish to build.

Conventions Used in This Book

The following typographical conventions are used in this book:

Italic: Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions.
Constant width: Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords.
Constant width bold: Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user.
Constant width italic: Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values determined by context.