Introduction to MongoDB and Studio 3T

MongoDB is a document database, which is a type of NoSQL database that stores data as individual documents.

This document database model provides the flexibility necessary to accommodate varying and evolving data structures, unlike the more rigid model seen in SQL or relational database management systems such as Oracle Database or MySQL.

MongoDB is an open-source database which is available as a cloud-based service or as an on-premises software product.

• The cloud service, MongoDB Atlas, provides multiple subscription tiers that can support small to enterprise-scale workloads.
• The on-premises solution, MongoDB Server, can run on Windows, macOS, and Linux systems and comes in two editions: MongoDB Community Server and MongoDB Enterprise Server.

Studio 3T provides a graphical user interface (GUI) and integrated development environment (IDE) for accessing and modifying MongoDB databases and their documents. With Studio 3T, you have an intuitive, user-friendly tool that lets you take full advantage of MongoDB’s document management capabilities.

At the heart of the Studio 3T environment is the Collection Tab, a key interface component for exploring, modifying, and analyzing the documents in a collection.

For example, you can display a collection in Tree View or Table View, where you can drill into each document to verify or update its fields and values, or you can choose JSON View, which renders the documents in the JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format.

With Studio 3T, you can view and modify document data, build comprehensive queries, import and export data, among many other tasks.

You’ll learn more about these and other features as you work through the exercises and lessons in this course. Before you can do that, however, you must install Studio 3T and ensure that you can connect to your MongoDB database.

By the end of this section, you will learn how to:

• Install Studio 3T on Windows 10 or macOS (Linux is also supported)

What you will need:

• Internet access to the Studio 3T website
• Supported Windows operating system or macOS operating system, installed on your local hard disk or a virtual machine
• Adequate user privileges on Windows or macOS to install and run Studio 3T

Download Studio 3T

First, download Studio 3T for your operating system.

Mac users, select the version that is appropriate for your processor (Intel or Apple Silicon/M1).

Once downloaded, you should install the application. To do this on:

Windows: Run the downloaded Studio 3T application to install.

Mac: Open the disk image and drag the Studio 3T application to the Applications folder.

Linux: Run the installer script from the archive.

Once installed, run Studio 3T and follow the prompts to register and enable the 14-day free trial of all the features.

Terms you might not know:

graphical user interface (GUI): an interface through which a user interacts with electronic devices such as computers, hand-held devices and other appliance (source)

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON): A lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to read and write, and easy for machines to parse and generate. (source)

integrated development environment (IDE): combines common activities of writing software into a single application, like editing source code, building executables, and debugging, which enables programmers to consolidate the different aspects of writing a computer program (source)

NoSQL database: originally referring to “non SQL” or “non-relational”, a database that provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations used in relational databases (source)

on-premises (also known as on-premise, and abbreviated “on-prem”): on-premise software that is installed and runs on computers on the premises of the person or organization using the software, rather than at a remote facility such as a server farm or cloud (source)

SQL database (also known as relational database): a collection of data items with pre-defined relationships between them. These items are organized as a set of tables with columns and rows. (source)