Chapter 1. Instant MongoDB

Welcome to Instant MongoDB. This book has been developed to provide you with all the information that you need to get started with MongoDB. You will learn the basics of MongoDB, get started by installing it, and then perform various operations on it such as inserting, updating, and querying data and discover some tips and tricks for using MongoDB.

This document contains the following sections:

So what is MongoDB? explains what MongoDB actually is, what you can do with it, and why it's so great.

Installation shows you how to download and install MongoDB with minimum effort, introducing the important configuration parameters and then how to set it up so that you can use it as soon as possible.

Quick start – setting up database and querying starts off by giving a brief comparison of terminologies from the Mongo world and their equivalent in the relational world. We then import some data in the database; this is the data we would be playing around with for most of the book. We conclude this section by connecting to the MongoDB from the Mongo shell and executing some queries to get a feel of how the queries and the data look. We basically would only be scratching the surface of this technology in this section.

Top 4 features you need to know about helps us learn how to perform various operations on MongoDB from the Mongo shell. By the end of this section you will be able to connect to a database from the shell, perform insert, update, and upsert (update + insert) operations, execute advanced queries, schema design concepts, and creating indexes for performance. Also, you will finally learn about the new aggregation framework and Map reduce operations.

People and places you should get to know lists many useful links to the project page and forums. Also, since every Open Source project is centered on a community, it provides a number of helpful articles, tutorials, and blogs which will enrich your learning process.