MongoDB vs MySQL - which is best for your next project?

Today, modern enterprises are thinking about better ways to store and manage their data - whether it's to gain better customer insight, adapt to changing user expectations, or beat competitors to market with new applications and business models.

The relational databases held the leadership for decades and at that time the choice was quite obvious, either MySQL, Oracle, or MS SQL. They’ve served as a basis for tons of enterprise applications, while modern apps require more diversity and scalability. Non-relational databases, like MongoDB, have appeared to meet the existing requirements and replace the current relational environment.

The comparison between MongoDB and MySQL has been raging for a while now. So, it's important to know the difference between the two as this will assist you in making an informed decision.

MySQL

MySQL is one of the best RDBMS being used for developing various web-based software applications. It's the most popular Open Source Relational SQL Database Management System. It's developed, marketed and supported by MySQL AB, which is a Swedish company.

Its title is a combination of "My" that is the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter, and "SQL" is an abbreviation for Structured Query Language.

MySQL is used by many database-driven web applications, including Drupal, Joomla, phpBB, and WordPress. It's also used by many popular websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

MongoDB

MongoDB is a general purpose, document-based, distributed database built for modern application developers and for the cloud era. It's a document database, which means it stores data in JSON-like documents. It's written in C++.

MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Server Side Public License (SSPL).

MongoDB is known to be used by Codecademy, Google Search, Foursquare, IBM, Uber, Coinbase, Barclays, HSBC, eBay, Cisco, Bosch, and Urban Outfitters.

Differences between MongoDB and MySQL

• RDBSs function on a paradigm called ACID, which is an acronym for (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, and Durability). This is not present in the MongoDB database.

• MongoDB offers a rich set of features and functionality. It has a rich query language, highly-functional secondary indexes (including text search and geospatial), a powerful aggregation framework for data analysis, faceted search, graph processing and more.

• In MongoDB, data represents in a collection of JSON documents while in MySQL, data is in tables and rows.

• The query language is called Structured Query Language, or SQL, from where MySQL gets its name. This exposes your DB susceptible to SQL injection attacks. On the other hand, MongoDB’s querying is object-oriented, which means you pass MongoDB a document explaining what you are querying. There is no parsing whatsoever, which will take some time getting used to if you already use SQL.

• MySQL is the JOIN operation that allows for querying across several tables. Although MongoDB doesn’t support joints, it supports multi-dimensional data types like other documents and arrays.

• With MySQL, you can have one document inside another (embedding). You would have to create one table for comments and another for posts if you are using MySQL to create a blog. In MongoDB, you will only have one array of comments and one collection of posts within a post.

• MongoDB is a good tool in handling database comprising unstructured data.

• MongoDB’s performance is better than that of MySQL and other relational DBs. And MySQL is criticized for poor performance, especially in ORM application.

• There are no reporting tools with MongoDB, meaning performance testing and analysis is not always possible. With MySQL, you can get several reporting tools that help you rove the validity of your applications.

• MongoDB has a Map Reduce feature that allows for easier scalability.

• Organizations of all sizes are adopting MongoDB because it enables them to build applications faster, handle highly diverse data types, and manage applications more efficiently at scale.

• MongoDB can also be scaled within and across multiple distributed data centers, providing new levels of availability and scalability previously unachievable with relational databases like MySQL.

• MongoDB was designed with high availability and scalability in mind and includes out-of-the-box replication and sharding. And MySQL concept does not allow efficient replication and sharding but in MySQL, one can access associated data using joins which minimizes duplication.

• MySQL supports foreign key. And MongoDB does not support foreign key.

• MySQL contains schema which is predefined. And MongoDB Contains dynamic schema.

• MySQL is not for hierarchical data storage. On the other side, MongoDB is the best fit for hierarchical data storage.

• MongoDB follows the BASE (Basic Availability, Soft-state and Eventual consistency) model. It supports atomic updates on a single document level. And MySQL follows the ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated and Durable) model. This means that once a transaction is complete, the data remains consistent and stable on the disc which may include distinct multiple memory locations.

• MySQL is quite slow in comparison to MongoDB when it comes to dealing with the large database.