CST 363 - Week 7

 Near the end of the Database System course is the new language, MongoDB. It made me wonder why introducing it not at the beginning of the course. But it's not a hard language to learn and get used to.

Comparing to MySQL, which was used majority in CST 363, they share many similarities. Both are not programming languages and use certain statements / command lines. Both have the database and table viewing which are very convenient to check if everything has done correctly. The database can be manual manipulated (insert or delete) at a certain level.

On the other side, definitely they have different aspects. First of all, MongoDB only check for error during runtime, so I always have to double check my command and typo. Second, whatever lines of code I wrote in MySQL can be saved as SQL file. While for the MongoDB, it needs another file (JavaScript) to be saved and rerun. And when it comes to Java, they require different structures. MongoDB uses Repository while MySQL uses Jdbc.

It's hard to choose which one since they both have an inconvenient element: error checking for MongoDB, statements for MySQL. They also require lots of typing to insert data manually from a file. Therefore, I will look through the perspective of an application that is built to run database. In other words, I will insert, update or delete data from the application, or from the programming language itself. With that, I will choose MongoDB as the Repository structure is easier to use and maintain. Moreover, the UI of MongoDB Compass is more convenient than MySQL for me. In addition, MongoDB's structures also include ArrayList in database, which we need a new database table in MySQL. With all of those reason, I will choose MongoDB over MySQL.