Announcing MongoDB 4.4 and MongoDB Cloud
Today at MongoDB.live, we’re announcing a number of new products and services that expand what you can do with MongoDB. Join the event (free and entirely virtual) to learn more, or read about the news on our announcements page.
At MongoDB, our mission is to free the genius within everyone by making data stunningly easy to work with. For many years, that’s meant building a database with an intuitive and flexible document model, plus a distributed systems architecture for resilience and horizontal scale-out.
Of course, the modern data architecture isn’t limited to only the transactional database. Many applications also require analytics and search functionality, which often requires teams to learn, deploy, and manage additional systems. If you’re building mobile apps, you’ll need to deal with data on the device and syncing it to the backend. You may also find yourself building data visualizations, writing a lot of glue code to move data between data services, or creating and operating custom data access APIs.
We want to make all of that easier. Today, alongside a new version of MongoDB and improvements to MongoDB Atlas, we’re announcing new products that go beyond the database and deliver a consistent experience for developers, wherever data resides. These are all part of MongoDB Cloud, a unified data platform for modern applications.
MongoDB 4.4
MongoDB 4.4, the latest version of the database, is now available in beta; you can try it out in MongoDB Atlas or download the development release. We think of MongoDB 4.4 as “user-driven engineering”, delivering a number of the features and improvements that have been most requested by the MongoDB community. Headline features of MongoDB 4.4 include:
- Aggregation enhancements: use the new Union stage to combine data from multiple collections into a single result set, define your own Custom Aggregation Expressions, and use new operators for array handling, string manipulation, and more.
- Refinable shard keys: as you scale, modify data distribution by adding suffixes to your shard key.
- Hedged reads: submit read requests to multiple replicas returning results from the fastest node.
- Mirrored reads: mirror a configurable subset of reads to secondaries, keeping their caches warm .
The latest release also includes other features such as compound hashed shard keys, resumable initial sync, streaming replication, global read and write concerns, and more. To learn more about what’s coming, read our guide to what’s new in MongoDB 4.4.
MongoDB Cloud
The best way to use MongoDB is with MongoDB Atlas, our fully-managed global cloud database. Atlas now makes it even easier to manage and optimize MongoDB with new functionality that allows you to run the database on auto-pilot:
- Atlas Auto-Scale, previously beta, is now Generally Available: Atlas monitors metrics in real time and adjusts cluster compute and storage to meet the needs of your workload.
- Atlas will now proactively give you advice on how to model your data for the best performance. Schema suggestions, available in both the Atlas Performance Advisor and Data Explorer, use database metadata and logs to flag common anti-patterns when working with the document data model. This includes having documents that are too large, having too many collections or indexes, using unbounded arrays, and more.
Atlas is the core of MongoDB Cloud, a unified data platform for modern applications. MongoDB Cloud provides a data foundation, unifying different data services with a common developer experience from cloud to edge. We’re excited to launch many of these data services today.
Atlas Search, now GA, is built into Atlas. Instead of deploying a separate search technology and coordinating data synchronization with your transactional database, you can create search indexes right in Atlas and access them with the same MongoDB aggregation framework you’re already familiar with.
Atlas Data Lake, also generally available today, helps realize the value of your data lake faster by querying data in any format on Amazon S3 using the MongoDB Query Language (MQL). You can query your existing S3 data or even enable automated tiering of data between the Atlas Cloud Database and Data Lake. Atlas Online Archive, available today in beta, automatically moves older data into Data Lake while preserving query access across both tiers with federated queries.
This data foundation reaches to the edge with the Realm Mobile Database, compatible with both iOS and Android. Mobile apps need local access to data, and Realm makes it happen without taking up too much space or draining your battery. Realm Sync, available in beta, automates the process of syncing bi-directionally with a backend Atlas cluster, with built-in conflict resolution.
Beyond the data foundation, MongoDB Cloud offers application services that simplify building apps with MongoDB. MongoDB Realm’s application development services include serverless functions, which execute application logic based on real-time database changes or on a schedule, and a GraphQL Service that makes it easy to expose a GraphQL API for MongoDB Atlas.
MongoDB Charts is the best way to build visualizations of MongoDB data and now makes accessing and sharing those visualizations even easier, whether directly or a part of an application. The new embedding SDK makes it easier to build charts into your applications and control them directly from application code. Dashboard filtering lets users define a data filter to be applied across all charts on a dashboard, customizing it according to their needs; each user of a shared dashboard can have a different, personalized filter. Dashboards can now also optionally be shared with a public link, giving view-only access to unauthenticated users.
Tools and Integrations
We’ve also announced a number of tools and integrations that make working with the database easier.
A new MongoDB shell is now available in beta, and improves on the existing shell with autocomplete, syntax highlighting, contextual help messages, and more. You can also work with MongoDB in your IDE of choice with new integrations for VS Code and Jetbrains products.
A new CLI for MongoDB Cloud adds an easily scriptable way of provisioning and controlling cloud resources. Alongside the UI and the API, you can now manage your cloud environments from your command line.
If you’re managing MongoDB yourself, two new Kubernetes announcements make the process easier. If you’re an Enterprise customer using our Enterprise Kubernetes Operator with Ops Manager, you’re now able to run Ops Manager itself in Kubernetes, simplifying the setup process. If you’re using the community version of MongoDB, a new MongoDB Community Kubernetes Operator enables you to deploy simple containerized MongoDB clusters.
Two new GA drivers expand our language support. The Rust driver, previously available in alpha, is now generally available, supporting this fast-growing language. Expanding the mobile development capabilities we bring with MongoDB Realm, we’re also announcing a new driver for Swift.
Get Building in the Cloud
We’re very excited about everything we’ve announced today. If you are too, you can get started with some of the new functionality by creating a free MongoDB Atlas account in minutes. We can't wait to see what you build!
The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for MongoDB products remains at MongoDB's sole discretion. This information is merely intended to outline our general product direction and it should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision nor is this a commitment, promise or legal obligation to deliver any material, code, or functionality. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements.