Part 1 A database for modern web applications

Imagine that you’re running an online store with millions of products and thousands of customers shopping at the same time. In a traditional relational database, you might start to hit performance walls as your data grows. Tables get larger, queries slow, and scaling vertically (adding more CPU or RAM) becomes expensive and limited.

MongoDB was designed to solve these problems. Unlike relational databases that rely on rigid schemas, monolithic architectures, and JOIN-heavy queries, MongoDB embraces a flexible, document-oriented model and is built from the ground up to scale horizontally. JOINs, although powerful, create tight coupling between tables, making horizontal scaling across distributed systems much more difficult. MongoDB prevents this problem by storing related data together in rich, self-contained documents. Need more capacity? Add another server. MongoDB’s automatic sharding takes care of distributing your data across nodes, allowing your system to grow with your users.

Have you ever tracked your food delivery in real time, received a personalized product recommendation while shopping online, or collaborated with teammates in a shared document editor? If so, you’ve experienced the power of modern web applications—and chances are that MongoDB was working behind the scenes.