From the start, MongoDB Inc. was developed to make database easier for developers. And when it came to the launch of cloud database-as-a-service MongoDB Atlas, the company employed the same design-thinking process to optimize experience.

This week, at MongoDB World 2022, Atlas gained a new set of capabilities that simplifies the large-scale data analysis and query needs of modern data-intensive application builders. As its range of use cases widens, is MongoDB positioning Atlas to replace traditional relational database management services?

“That’s a very loaded question,” said Tony Baer (pictured), principal at dbInsight LLC. “For certain cases, I think it will replace RDBMS, but where I depart from Mongo is I do not believe that they’re going to replace all RDBMSs.”

Baer spoke with theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante at MongoDB World, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed MongoDB and how the announcements at MongoDB World fit into the company’s current strategy and future goals. (* Disclosure below.)

Will MongoDB let developers run analytics nodes serverless?

Document databases, such as MongoDB Atlas, won’t ever completely replace RDBMS, because the two address different situations, according to Baer. Tables, lines and columns are natural for structured data such as financial transactions, while internet of things data is more easily represented in document form, he explained.

“It’s kind of like documents are the way that you normally see the world; relational is the way that you would structure the world,” Baer added.

The announcements on MongoDB Atlas include improvements to the service’s ability to perform large-scale search and data analytics across the entire data lifecycle. Column Store Indexes, due to be released later this year, will allow users to perform common analytical queries without changing document structure or moving data across systems. Analytical nodes will be able to be scaled individually, allowing independent fine-tuning of performance.

“The idea here is you can tailor in a node to the workload,” Baer stated, giving an example of a current use case of an operations node that is IOPS intensive versus an analytics node that is more compute-intensive.

But Baer sees a more advanced capability being announced in the future.

“The fruition of this is going to be when they say, ‘You can run your operational nodes dedicated, but we’ll let you run your analytic nodes serverless,’” he stated. “You can’t do it yet, but I’ve got to believe that’s on the roadmap.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the MongoDB World event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the MongoDB World NYC event. Neither MongoDB Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE