Computing has changed much since the 1970s. Hardware. Data. Programming languages. But despite all these advances in hardware capabilities, in the types of data we process (tweets, comments, photos, video), and in the expressive powers of our programming languages, we're still using a database paradigm that's 40 years old. Hence, the proliferation of new database technologies. This talk will introduce MongoDB, an open-source, document-oriented database optimized for speed, scalability, and ease of use.

Kyle Banker from 10gen.com will start us off with a live tutorial, setting up MongoDB and experimenting with the JavaScript shell. Then we'll look at how to use MongoDB from Ruby and Rails. We'll explore MongoDB's unique features, including atomic updates-in-place, upserts, and capped collections. We'll see how to use map-reduce for complex aggregation. And, finally, we'll compare document-oriented data modeling with relational modeling. By the end of the presentation, you'll have a good understanding of MongoDB's capabilities. You may even be inspired to start using it in your projects.