if you've developed applications in the last 10 years or so you've probably heard of so-called
NoSQL databases and one of the biggest names in NoSQL databases is MongoDB MongoDB promises quote
no database makes you more productive OutSystems is all about accelerating app development so what
happens when you combine the two find out next in this episode of Decoded: Quick Hits
with MongoDB's promise of high productivity and the scalability that comes with the
document database it's no surprise that many organizations are considering or adopting MongoDB
if you're considering or already using MongoDB you may need a fast way to build apps on top
of your MongoDB data and with OutSystems you can build web and mobile apps super fast and you can
do so with MongoDB and get the benefits of both MongoDB makes it easy to build your data models
in an agile fashion and OutSystems helps you build apps on top of that data and it's not just fast to
build an app it's also fast and easy to change the app to accommodate changes to the underlying
data structures in MongoDB working with MongoDB is possible thanks to a MongoDB connector library
in the open source OutSystems Forge repository if you're not yet an OutSystems developer getting
started is easy and free just head over to try.outsystems.com enter event code dqh1 and
follow the steps to set up your account download the ide and build your first app in minutes
let's take a look at the OutSystems Forge it's a repository of open source components some
developed and supported by OutSystems and others developed and published by the community here's
the MongoDB connector I can download it from the Forge website and install it from my local machine
or even easier I can use the Forge tab in the Service Studio IDE to install the component in my
chosen environment directly once the component is installed I can open it in Service Studio
and see the modules that are part of the connector the MongoDB connector has three modules
the module MongoDB libx is an extension written in C# yep you can use C# to extend
the OutSystems platform that is a wrapper for the MongoDB driver making it easy to integrate MongoDB
into your OutSystems application the module MongoDB core contains helper
actions that abstract some of the common tasks in connecting to and querying your MongoDB database
to further accelerate the development process and the MongoDB demo module provides a demonstration
of reading and writing to a MongoDB database and includes functionality to bootstrap its own data
all you need to do is provide the connection string database name and collection name
and the connector will do the rest in the demo app these values are implemented as site properties
making it easy to customize them when moving from development to testing to production
and ensuring that each environment uses the right data
let's go ahead and take a look at the demo app it's built on top of our traditional web app model
though the connector can also be used with either mobile or reactive web apps as well
the home screen lists the current MongoDB version the connector was built for as well as the C#
driver version and if your database has not yet been bootstrapped or if you deleted the
database during testing the home screen will show a button allowing you to bootstrap the sample data
if i go to the directory screen you'll see the sample data in a table along with a link
to create a new directory entry search box and paging if I click the new entry link I get a
simple form allowing me to create a new entry as well as a link to add contact records highlighting
the ability to have multiple related records in a hierarchy with MongoDB these can be embedded
directly in the parent document once the query data is in the app it's handled using in-memory
structures and these can have relationships that represent the document structure in your database
in this video you've seen how easy it is to use the MongoDB connector from the OutSystems Forge
to take advantage of the productivity and scalability of MongoDB and still build your
apps using the fast visual development platform that OutSystems provides in our next video we'll
walk through a simple example of creating a data model and app on the OutSystems side and show
the resulting MongoDB document structure thanks for watching and see you next time!