June 10, 2020

MongoDB Cloud brings developers and edge together

By Tech Online Things

MongoDB is making it easier for developers to work with data wherever it resides with the announcement of a series of products that make up its MongoDB Cloud platform.

The launch of version 4.4 of MongoDB alongside the general availability of Atlas Data Lake, Atlas Search and MongoDB Realm will provide organizations with a way to leave behind data silos and fragmented APIs as MongoDB Cloud delivers a developer-optimized, cloud-to-mobile platform.

In a press release, President and CEO of MongoDB, Dev Ittycheria explained how MongoDB Cloud provides a unified development experience, saying:

“Developers today are expected to leverage a myriad of technologies, data models, APIs and languages across disparate systems in order to support the transactional, search and analytical features that users demand in modern applications. And while cloud computing has revolutionized the tech industry, providing a low cost of entry and unlimited scale among other proven benefits, most cloud migrations have merely replicated the complexities and drawbacks of the traditional datacenter. With MongoDB Cloud, developers can finally leave the burden of data silos and sprawl behind and truly unlock the value of data through a unified development experience.”

Keeping data in-sync

Developing great mobile apps has become especially challenging as users expect them to be highly responsive, reliable, work offline and immediately synchronize data as changes happen in the app or the backend.

Last year, MongoDB acquired the open source mobile database and synchronization platform Realm.io in an effort to help developers build mobile applications more quickly.

Now the company has integrated Realm.io’s technology with its own in the form of MongoDB Realm which is now generally available. MongoDB Realm integrates with MongoDB’s serverless platform to provide developers with a uniform and easier way to work with data all the way through the application lifecycle from the front to the backend.

A new feature called Realm Sync enables bi-directional data synchronization between Realm’s mobile client on the front end and Atlas on the backend. As a result of this, data can be seamlessly shared between devices and with the backing database without complex conflict resolution and integration code.

Director of digital technology at 7-Eleven, Srikanth Gandra explained how the convenience store chain was able to use Realm Sync to simplify its inventory management system, saying:

“What we’ve created is really innovative. Since rolling the application built on MongoDB Realm out to all 8,500 stores in North America, we’ve been able to sync data across more than 20,000 devices on a nearly real-time basis. We’ve heard good feedback from store managers. They can start using devices immediately, rather than waiting minutes to download the data on initial startup, like they used to. Data accuracy, especially around inventory when sales happen or shipments arrive, has really improved.”