In this post we will learn about some of the essential definitions and terms in MongoDB. We will learn about document, BSON, and collection.
Introduction
Now that you have installed and setup a MongoDB Server, it’s time to learn more about MongoDB.
What Is A Document
The document is the basic unit of data in MongoDB server. It exists in the BSON format in the database.
What Is A BSON
BSON is a serialization format similar to JSON. The “B” in BSON represents binary encoding. BSON provides supports for data types like Date and binary that aren’t supported in JSON.
It is used to store documents and make remote procedure calls in MongoDB server.
Whats Is A Collection
A collection is a group of MongoDB documents. You can think of a collection is something like a table in a RDBMS database but without the table schema. So, unlike a RDBMS table, it doesn’t enforce any strict data types for the data within the documents.
Conclusion
We looked at the most important definitions and terms in MongoDB in this post. For a comprehensive list of other terms, you can refer to the official MongoDB’s glossary.
