This document discusses Drupal and its use of MongoDB as a database. It provides an overview of MongoDB, describing its document-oriented and schema-less structure as well as features like scalability, performance, indexing and querying. It also lists several Drupal modules that integrate MongoDB, including modules for field storage, caching, sessions and search. The document recommends MongoDB as an interesting compromise between performance, scalability and functionality. It concludes by referencing resources on Drupal and MongoDB and advertising upcoming Drupal events.

1. Drupal and the rise of the Documents
Claudio Beatrice (@omissis)

2. It was a warm summer evening in ancient Greece, when
one of the greatest philosopher of all times(guess who? :)
gave birth to the Theory of Forms, greatly contributing to
Ontology, eg the study of the nature of being, existence or
reality as such.

3. An entity(from greek εἶναι, “to be”) may be defined as a
thing which is recognized as being capable of an
independent existence and which can be uniquely
identified. An entity is an abstraction from the
complexities of some domain. When we speak of an
entity we normally speak of some aspect of the real
world which can be distinguished from other aspects of
the real world.

4. Who did just say “yeah but whattabout relationships...
A
relationship
captures
how two or
more
entities are
related to
one
another.

5. ... and tables?”

6. and btw, a question:
Awesome! Count to 3 and go asking
mr. Boyce and mr. Codd then

7. A quick look at Drupal’s system table
This is quite a good example from “Master how to hammer a
screw vol. 666”: there must be a better solution!

8. Introducing MongoDB
• Document oriented
• schema-less
• json-style
• Scalable
• sharding
• replica sets
• Performant
• Fully featured
• indexes
• queries
• map/reduce
• gridfs
• geospatial functions
• capped collections
• journaling

9. Introducing MongoDB
It looks like an interesting compromise between
performance, scalability and number of functionalities

10. Oh noes! Philosophy again!
Flexibility Power
JSON documents provide a A consistent set of RDBMS
schema-less, rich data features implemented such
model that maps to native as secondary indexes,
programming language dynamic queries, sorting,
types upserts, aggregation plus
his own ones such as gridfs
and map/reduce
Speed/Scaling Ease of use
Embedded documents help Installing, configuring,
avoiding heavy joins, while maintaining and using
auto sharding makes quick MongoDB are all kept as
and easy to scale out the easy as possible: more time
database for your app, less for your
server configuration

11. Ok then.. tell us about Drupal!
mongodb - support library for the other modules
mongodb_block - stores block information
mongodb_cache - stores cache
mongodb_field_storage - stores fields
mongodb_session - stores sessions
mongodb_queue - DrupalQueueInterface
implementation
mongodb_watchdog - store watchdog messages
search_api_mongodb - backend storage mechanism for
Search API

12. Time for a demo!

13. Stuff & references
https://github.com/omissis/Drupal-MongoDB-Playhouse
http://mongodb.org
http://drupal.org/project/mongodb
http://drupalwatchdog.com/1/1/performance-scalability-
drupal-7
http://groups.drupal.org/node/183279
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entity-relationship_model

14. Sessions from past Drupalcons
San Francisco 2010
http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/
mongodb-humongous-drupal.html
Copenhagen 2010
http://www.archive.org/details/Mongodb-
HumongousDrupal_491
Chicago 2011
http://www.archive.org/details/
drupalconchi_day3_practical_mongo_db

15. The Next Big Drupal Things
Drupal Dev Days 2012 Drupalcon EU 2012
Barcelona - June 15-17 Munich - August 20-23

16. Claudio Beatrice
http://twitter.com/#!/omissis
http://agavee.com
http://associazione.drupalitalia.org