THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT)

IoT Database: Choosing the Best Data Platform for Your IoT Needs

IoT is not only about connecting objects to the internet. It is first and foremost about collecting data. As you connect more and more objects, a database that is optimized for IoT data will be key to the success of your business. MongoDB and MongoDB Atlas, the cloud offering from MongoDB, is a solution of choice for your IoT needs. It can handle large volumes of data, can scale horizontally or vertically, and natively supports time series data, typical in IoT architectures.

Try it out on Atlas now for free

Capturing Value from the IoT

Digital Transformation drives an increasing integration between the physical and digital worlds—with IoT being a critical component not just in manufacturing, but smart cities, smart homes, smart cars, and much more. Realizing the business value of connecting all of these “things” enables creation of new revenue models, improves productivity, and generates new insights that drive operational efficiencies. IoT already connects billions of devices worldwide, and that number is growing daily. Many market observers predict that only by adopting IoT can organizations fully unlock the revenue opportunities promised by digital transformation. MongoDB, with its ability to efficiently handle and blend IoT and operational data in real-time, helps you to rapidly capture the most value from IoT.

Industry Leading IoT Platforms are Powered by MongoDB

Bosch has built its IoT suite on MongoDB, bringing the power of data to a new range of Industrial Internet applications including manufacturing, automotive, retail, energy, and many others.

Learn More →

Cumulocity IoT—part of Software AG—is a leading IoT platform in Europe, which has been built from the ground up to be open, rapid to deploy, and distributed. In order to handle diverse, rapidly changing data at an extreme scale, Cumulocity leveraged MongoDB to help solve this challenge

Learn more how Cumuloicty uses MongoDB time-Series →

WHAT YOU NEED FROM YOUR DATA PLATFORM

IoT Database Features with MongoDB

MongoDB—and its SaaS version, MongoDB Atlas—is the database of choice to help you meet your business needs with regard to IoT. It will help you with the challenges encountered with IoT databases and provide you with additional features that will make your IoT architecture more efficient.

High-Speed Data Ingest and Real-Time Analytics

Each new generation of “thing” comes with new sensors, emitting unprecedented volumes of data and providing new insights into the business. Building and operating IoT applications requires a data platform capable of ingesting massive volumes of sensor and event data with concurrent support for real-time analysis to flag anomalies and critical events as they happen.

Event-Driven, Real-Time Architecture

An event-driven architecture creates a data pipeline where event producers—devices and gateways in your IoT network—generate a stream of events, and event consumers listen and react to those events in near real-time. Producers and consumers are all decoupled from each other, which removes dependencies between components, and the system can grow and shrink in response to demand.

Intelligent Edge

Today, the compute power of the cloud is moving to the edge. Instead of sending every bit of data from the sensor to the cloud, edge devices are becoming more intelligent, pre-aggregating data, performing analytics locally, and synchronizing data to the cloud. Not only does this reduce network traffic, it also allows for business insights to be made locally, increasing productivity.

Fast, Flexible Development Experience

Our Intelligent Data Platform supports your IoT apps from edge to core. From the devices at the edge of the network to the IoT applications at the core, our Application Data Platform accelerates and de-risks the delivery and operation of your IoT applications. We start with MongoDB, the world’s most popular database, and bind in complementary technologies such as Apache Kafka to become part of an integrated, event-driven IoT platform.

Time-Series Data - Simplified

With native Time-Series Data support in MongoDB 5.0, you can ingest, query, and process Time-Series with the same ease that MongoDB is known for, reducing complexity and accelerating development time. New date operators and window functions allow you to identify trends and anomalies in real-time—without the need for more database proliferation. Query blended data in the same platform and accelerate your developers’ productivity and projects.

Realm Sync: Reliability in a Disconnected World

Realm Sync can ensure that nothing is getting lost—even without a mobile signal. Simplify your automotive, farm machinery, logistics project. Best of all, Realm is available on many platforms, super lightweight, and embeds right into your application. It can then easily be deployed and integrated with frameworks such as Azure IoT Edge, AWS Green Grass, and others.

Our Application Data Platform Supports Your IoT Apps from Edge to Core

MongoDB’s Application Data Platform provides a horizontal data player, that simplifies and accelerates the delivery and operation of your IoT applications. MongoDB, the world’s most popular database, gained significant capabilities in the last few years to be part of your integrated, event-driven IoT solution.

MongoDB Atlas

MongoDB Atlas is our on-demand, fully-managed, and global database-as-a-service (DBaaS) that runs on all leading cloud platforms so you can focus on apps, not ops.

A leader in the DBaaS space, Atlas radically simplifies development and operations, provides a persistence layer for event-driven architecture, and distributes data to consumers whenever and wherever needed.

Atlas lets you scale at the click of a button, in response to an API call, or fully automatically as loads grow, to keep up with the demands of your microservices—with no downtime, full security, and complete data protection.

Our newly available Time-Series Collections in MongoDB allow you to capture, process, and interact with Time-Series data with the same tools and simplicity as with other MongoDB data. New date operators and window functions give you insight in real-time to enable business applications that work in the now.

MongoDB Change Streams enables applications to stream real-time data changes in the database by leveraging MongoDB’s underlying replication capabilities. Change Streams can notify your application of all writes to documents (including deletes) and provide access to all available information immediately as changes occur in the database.

Applications can consume change streams directly via a message queue, but MongoDB’s Atlas Triggers provides a serverless way of consuming change stream events. MongoDB Change Streams drives Atlas Triggers to create responsive, event-driven pipelines.

Triggers can execute MongoDB Functions on predefined schedules or in real-time, responding to database changes or user authentication events.

Learn More →

MongoDB Realm

MongoDB Realm is part of our mission to get the database out of the way of developer productivity.

Realm is a serverless application platform that provides an elastically scalable infrastructure for handling requests and coordinating cloud service and database interactions. Think of Realm as adding value to your business applications by removing the need for tedious boilerplate code and automatically managing your application’s backend.

With Realm, there is no need to monitor and manage requests per second. The Realm platform takes care of the infrastructure, allowing you to focus on the high-value parts of your applications.

Realm accelerates development with simple, secure access to data and services to help you build the fastest, most reactive, always-on apps and get them to market faster while reducing operational costs and effort.

Realm works with any MongoDB Atlas cluster and contains these client components:

MongoDB Realm SDK to leverage the power of the lightweight Realm database on mobile and IoT edge devices.

MongoDB Realm Sync to sync data changes between MongoDB Realm instances on the edge and MongoDB Atlas.

Learn more →

Full Data Lifecycle Management

MongoDB’s data platform capability supports the entire data lifecycle from ingestion, storage, querying, real-time analysis, and visualization all the way through to online archiving. With MongoDB Atlas you can not just historically couple, but even query across hot and archived data. You can easily configure your system to ensure the best balance between real-time query speed and storage efficiency for your use-case.

A diagram showing all the IoT data being ingested and then entering a cycle of the following steps: store, access, analyze, visualize and tier.

MongoDB’s IoT Reference Architecture

MongoDB is your partner of choice when it comes to IoT databases. MongoDB offers a wide range of products and solutions that will simplify your IoT architecture.

Analytics with MongoDB

MongoDB offers many options for machine learning and analytics. To visualize your IoT data, use the MongoDB Connector for BI with third-party reporting tools like Tableau, Microstrategy, and others, or use MongoDB Charts, the easiest way to visualize your data. The MongoDB Connector for Apache Spark lets you access Spark libraries for streaming, machine learning, and graph APIs. Unleash the power of Python in your analysis with the native MongoDB Python driver or our array of other drivers supporting popular analytics languages like R.

MongoDB Connector for Apache Spark

Connector for BI

MongoDB Charts

Why MongoDB?

Best way to work with data

MongoDB's flexible document data model makes working with data unimaginably easy, whether you're working with data held locally in your IoT devices or MongoDB Atlas in the back end.

Ease: Documents match objects in code, making it faster and easier for developers to build new IoT apps. JSON is the language of APIs, which means you can use the same data model and syntax from the device to the back end. This increases developer productivity and enhances both efficient API design and data model consistency.

Flexibility: Add new time series data elements, sensors, and devices without the need to wrangle with database schema changes.
Versatility: Query IoT data any way you want to support rich application functionality, real-time analytics, and user experience.

Integration: Work seamlessly with all of the leading systems for streaming data, machine learning, BI, and more.

Security: Robust access controls, auditing, and encryption controls protect valuable IoT data both in flight and at rest.

Intelligently put data where you need it

MongoDB is distributed by design. Atlas lets you precisely control where you place data globally so you can ensure fast performance anywhere across all of your IoT and enterprise data.

Scalability: Hundreds of sensors today, millions worldwide tomorrow; Atlas horizontally scales out your database globally as your needs demand.
Locality: Distribute data globally for optimal performance or bind it to a specific geographic region for regulatory compliance.
Workload Isolation: Ingest vast streams of sensor data and analyze it to learn from it all in real time, without any data movement or resource contention.
High Availability: Your connected assets are always generating data, so built-in redundancy and self-healing recovery ensure that your data platform is always on regardless of planned and unplanned downtime.

Freedom to run anywhere

MongoDB offers a unified experience that gives you the freedom to run anywhere. Gain total deployment flexibility and build a ubiquitous data layer from your data center to the cloud and your IoT devices.

Portability: Run the same data platform everywhere, with a single API for your developers to use from the edge to the cloud.
Synchronization: Gain end-to-end data management and movement from edge to cloud with bi-directional and seamless synchronization.
Global Coverage: Deploy IoT around the globe, in your own data centers, and with the MongoDB Atlas fully automated global cloud service available on 60+ regions from all the major cloud providers.
No Lock-in: MongoDB does not bind you to a specific IoT platform; get the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy and avoid vendor lock-in.

Ease: Documents match objects in code, making it faster and easier for developers to build new IoT apps. JSON is the language of APIs, which means you can use the same data model and syntax from the device to the back end. This increases developer productivity and enhances both efficient API design and data model consistency.

Flexibility: Add new time series data elements, sensors, and devices without the need to wrangle with database schema changes.
Versatility: Query IoT data any way you want to support rich application functionality, real-time analytics, and user experience.

Integration: Work seamlessly with all of the leading systems for streaming data, machine learning, BI, and more.

Security: Robust access controls, auditing, and encryption controls protect valuable IoT data both in flight and at rest.

Scalability: Hundreds of sensors today, millions worldwide tomorrow; Atlas horizontally scales out your database globally as your needs demand.
Locality: Distribute data globally for optimal performance or bind it to a specific geographic region for regulatory compliance.
Workload Isolation: Ingest vast streams of sensor data and analyze it to learn from it all in real time, without any data movement or resource contention.
High Availability: Your connected assets are always generating data, so built-in redundancy and self-healing recovery ensure that your data platform is always on regardless of planned and unplanned downtime.

Portability: Run the same data platform everywhere, with a single API for your developers to use from the edge to the cloud.
Synchronization: Gain end-to-end data management and movement from edge to cloud with bi-directional and seamless synchronization.
Global Coverage: Deploy IoT around the globe, in your own data centers, and with the MongoDB Atlas fully automated global cloud service available on 60+ regions from all the major cloud providers.
No Lock-in: MongoDB does not bind you to a specific IoT platform; get the benefits of a multi-cloud strategy and avoid vendor lock-in.

With You Every Step of the Way

MongoDB Professional Services engages with you to build an Innovation Accelerator and to provide Innovation Solution Kits, combining advisory consulting, program governance, and application lifecycle expertise—all cultivated from best practices developed with the world’s most innovative organizations. This helps you capture the full value of your IoT deployment with always-on applications to act on the huge volumes of new IoT sensor data. Learn more →

Featured Resources

WEBINAR

Architecting IoT Solutions with MongoDB

PRESENTATION

Multi-Cloud IoT Projects with MongoDB and PeerIslands

WHITE PAPER

Real-Time Data via Event-Driver Architecture

WEBINAR

Architecting IoT Solutions with MongoDB

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FAQ

Are IoT Databases Necessary?

The Internet of Things is not only about connecting devices to the internet. It’s mostly about collecting, processing, and analyzing data. For this reason, a database appropriate for IoT data is essential to the success of your IoT project. MongoDB has a flexible data schema that can accommodate your IoT sensors’ data. It is also scalable and highly available. In the recent version, 5.0, it also offers time series collections which are optimized for IoT data.

What Should You Look for in Your IoT Database?

To handle the large volume of data produced by IoT, your database will need to offer high performance, along with scalability and high availability. MongoDB can offer all of these features. When using MongoDB Atlas, you can ensure that your servers are running on reliable clusters, and sharding capabilities will be readily available when needed.

Relational Databases vs. NoSQL for IoT Development

Technically, any database can be used to store IoT data. In reality, some databases are better suited for IoT data than others. Due to the polymorphic nature of IoT sensor data, having a database that supports flexible data schemas is easier to use and ensures that your application will be more resilient to future changes. MongoDB offers flexible schemas, as well as time series collections, which are key required capabilities for IoT applications.

What are the Suitable Databases for IoT?

To ensure success for your IoT project, you will need a database that can accommodate the IoT sensors data. IoT data has many different forms and often changes with time. This is why MongoDB is a great choice for IoT applications. It offers a flexible data schema that easily accommodates change, and when used in the cloud with MongoDB Atlas, it can be easily scaled as your needs change.

Which NoSQL Database for IoT Applications?

There are many types of NoSQL databases and each one has specific pros and cons. If deployment flexibility (On-Prem, In-Field, Cloud), cloud flexibility (AWS, Azure, GCP), schema flexibility (frequent changes/additions), the ability to blend different data (time-series, operational), or real-time is a priority for your IoT solution, then MongoDB and MongoDB Atlas should be a primary choice.

What are the Four Components of IoT?

When thinking about the architecture of an IoT project, four components need to be considered. These components are the devices, the internet gateways, the edge computing, and the data center. MongoDB can support your data needs from small and embedded devices (with Realm), to Edge Computing and Gateways to the Data Center and cloud (on all major cloud providers).

Why is a Database Important in IoT?

IoT sensors will produce enormous amounts of data once they are activated. In order to store, process, and analyze all this data, it needs to be stored and processed efficiently. This is where the right database will come into play. MongoDB, with its time series collections, is a perfect match to manage your IoT data. And with the increased need for processing data and extracting business value in real-time, MongoDB is uniquely able to handle this.

What are the Challenges With IoT Databases?

To get the most out of your Internet of Things applications, you will need to use a database that can handle the following challenges.

Data volume and variety: Data produced by IoT sensors can take many different forms. As your IoT ecosystem grows, you will need to ensure that your database can flexibly evolve data schemas without overhead—at scale.
Scalability: IoT devices produce massive amounts of data. To avoid outages or performance issues, you will need to have a database that can easily scale.
Time series data: In order to reduce disk space and to optimize data queries, time series data should be supported.
High performance: With the large amount of data coming in, your database software needs to support high throughput and fast writing times.