Case Study: Database Schema Design for Improved Performance in MongoDB

Database schema design is much more challenging in case of NoSQL databases compared to relational ones, as there is no straightforward recipe that can be easily applied. Every NoSQL database management system has its own schema design general guidelines, which implies that the process of database schema design is more tedious compared to the traditional schema design process used for relational databases. In order to make sure that the best database schema was chosen for a given use case, one can develop several database schema variants and run a benchmarking experiment, so it becomes clear which variant is the best choice. This paper presents a case study regarding database schema design for MongoDB. For an intercity transportation use case, two database schema variants were designed, implemented and evaluated.