MongoDB Use Case : Cisco
3 min readJun 6, 2021
Content of this blog
- About MongoDB
- Case Study : Cisco
About MongoDB
What is MongoDB?
MongoDB is a document-oriented database that stores data in JSON-like documents with dynamic schema i.e., records could be stored without the need to consider data structure like number of fields or types of fields to store values.
Benefits
Flexible Document Schemas
- MongoDB’s document model allows virtually any kind of data structure to be modeled and manipulated easily.
- MongoDB’s BSON(Binary JSON) helps in placing objects in one collection that consists of different sets of fields.
- It also supports creation of explicit schemas and flexibility required for handling changes in requirements or environment.
Code-native data access
- Data in MongoDB are stored in document format and it could be accessed from any language using the data structure native to that respective language.
Change-friendly design
- There is no downtime while changing the schema in case of MongoDB
- New data could be easily be added in MongoDB without disrupting its operations.
Powerful querying and analytics
- MongoDB makes it easy to access and it rarely requires joins and transactions for the same.
- MQL(MongoDB Query Language) is a full-featured, powerful language that allows deep querying into documents, also it makes it easier to perform complex analytics pipelines with few lines of JSON-like MQL.
Easy horizontal scale-out
- Clusters with real-time replication, shard large or high-throughput collections across multiple clusters could be created in MongoDB to sustain performance and scaler horizontally.
Case Study : Cisco
About Cisco
- Cisco is an American multinational technology company headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in December 1984 by Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerners, two Stanford University computer scientists.
- It develops, manufactures and sells networking hardware, software, telecommunications equipment and other high-technology services and products. It’s subsidiaries includes OpenDNS, WebEx, Jabber and Jasper.
Challenge
- Cisco launched WebEx Social, an enterprise collaboration platform designed for today’s social, mobile, visual and virtual workforce in November 2011. As a “Facebook for enterprises”, WebEx Social connects people to the information and expertise they need.
- This comprehensive collaboration platform combines the four core Enterprise 2.0 pillars i.e., business processes, content, communication and social features that enables users to work together effortlessly.
- With their existing relational database, complex SQL queries against highly normalized schema were time consuming. Also, it was difficult to manage schema upgrades and migrate data from release to release.
- WebEx Social’s rapid evolution required expanded data store capabilities and the ability to build successful new social features.
Solution
- Cisco adopted MongoDB in mid-2011 and now it serves as the primary real-time data store for WebEx Social’s social features which are write-heavy in nature.
- MongoDB meets the demands of WebEx Social’s high-volume write activity. It also provides a fast, easy way to de-normalize, index and extract information from data stores.
- MongoDB’s document-based data model offered Cisco the right balance between complex relational databases and the pure key value store of NoSQL solutions.
- Intuitive mapping from domain model to JSON docs and complex querying capabilities enables Cisco to cross-reference users and query embedded lists.
