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MongoDB Academy · Lesson

The Relational Database Bottleneck

Learners will identify the scaling and flexibility pain points of SQL databases that motivated the NoSQL movement.

The Rise of Relational Databases

For decades, relational databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL ruled. They store data in neat tables of rows and columns, and they work great. So why look further?

The Rigid Schema Problem

SQL tables use a rigid schema: you must define every column up front. Changing it later means a migration that can lock the table and cause downtime.

-- Adding a column to a large table in PostgreSQL can be slow
ALTER TABLE users ADD COLUMN preferences JSONB;
-- On 100M rows this may require a full table rewrite
-- and blocks reads/writes for minutes

All lessons in this course

  1. The Relational Database Bottleneck
  2. NoSQL Flavors: Document, Key-Value, Column, Graph
  3. The CAP Theorem in Plain English
  4. Where MongoDB Fits In
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