Towards Formalization Of MongoDB

Relational databases have been prevailing for the last two decays, with features of clearsemantics and ease of use with SQL supported by the underlying theory, relational algebra.Relational databases provide good support for structural data management. Recentdevelopment in IT brings forward big data, featuring extreme large volume and variety in datatype and structures. Relational databases find it difficult to handle big data due to the strictconstraints on data structure and data relations, and so on[1][2]. NoSQL databases, includingHBase[3][4], MongoDB[5], Cassandra[6], etc. are receiving their popularity for their capability indealing with large amount of complex data in various structures. Currently there is no way toknow the feasibility of the migration of traditional relational databases to NoSQL databases.The migration requires a way to evaluate the feasibility of the migration and potentialperformance of the new systems. This paper is to investigate these issues by modeling aNoSQL database, to be specific, MongoDB, with relational algebra. The modeling will allowsthe comparison of the semantic expression powers between relational databases andMongoDB, allowing the feasibility analysis and evaluation of the migration of a relationaldatabase to MongoDB. The model is expected to facilitate the optimization of the newNoSQL database. In addition, some method of pattern design to MongoDB is to be proposed,to help people understand how to design a reasonable NoSQL database schema. At the end,this paper shows a solution to migrating data from SQL database to NoSQL database withmachine learning algorithms.