MongoDB is an open-source, document-oriented database that provides flexible and scalable data storage. It is designed to work with modern application architectures like web applications. MongoDB can replace relational databases for web applications, store semi-structured content like media, and enable real-time analytics. It scales easily through replication and sharding. Documents in MongoDB can contain embedded objects and arrays, which reduces the need for joins compared to SQL databases. Queries in MongoDB are also flexible, allowing queries on fields within arrays or embedded documents.