If you’re like me, you’ve been working in the web industry for many years now, primarily using the tried-and-true relational database management systems (RDMS) such as MySQL or PostgreSQL. These databases are well-known, well-supported, and generally considered “the right way” to do things—even if they’re not. In the past few years an alternative database philosophy generally dubbed “NoSQL” which are much more flexible, non-relational database systems.

One of these modern database systems is MongoDB. MongoDB is a document-oriented database, not a relational one. In the standard relational databases you are used to you have tables which are defined by schemas which define the table’s columns. This schema is the DNA of that table, which is used to house some specific type of data. Each column of the table has a designated name and data type, and every row in the table has every column described by the schema.

Documents not rows

In MongoDB the concept of a row is replaced by the concept of a document. A document is flexible, it is amorphous, it can be almost anything. Properties may be set on documents dynamically, where every document of the same type might not actually have the same properties available. It is your own responsibility in your application logic to properly handle when properties exist or don’t exist on your documents. This is in stark contrast to the standard relational database methodology where a row’s data description is set in stone and can always be guaranteed to exist in a certain way. Documents can store several types of data—even arrays!—that are referenced by keys. Although there are differences, you can generally think of a MongoDB document as similar to a hashmap such as a Javascript object or Python Dictionary, except that they are persisted.

Horizontal scaling

Another strong attribute of MongoDB is its almost effortless ability to scale. Most relational database de facto standards were designed and developed many years ago and have their roots before the days of the Internet—before today’s massive amounts of data even seemed possible. As database size and demand increases engineers have to find ways to scale their database systems to handle the strain. Typically in systems like MySQL it’s quite common (and relatively easy) to start by setting up clusters of databases and replicating your data across them to spread out the load. This kind of horizontal scaling can require significant thought and implementation, of course varying by your particular setup.

MongoDB makes this process extremely simple by default. Though you can of course do some tweaking, the default behavior is still pretty good for most cases. The database system itself can handle automatically distributing your documents across nodes (a.k.a. servers) using a concept known as sharding, and even handle balancing the load as queries hit the database.

MongoDB’s goody bag

MongoDB has several of the functionalities that you’re used to with common database systems such as the ability to index on any attribute of a document for optimizing your queries based on your data. One particularly cool feature is MongoDB’s native support for geospatial queries, which makes storing location information on your documents and then querying based on geospatial proximities (find all places near X, Y) almost completely trivial. In fact, Foursquare uses MongoDB for that very reason among others.

You may be familiar with stored procedures on your common RDMSes which allow for you to compile functions on the database to assist in common queries you carry out. MongoDB also has this functionality but they are written in JavaScript. Combine this with MongoDB’s native Map/Reduce functionalities and serious data processing at the database query level is possible, rather than chopping and dicing the data yourself in your own application logic.

Another pretty cool feature of MongoDB is the GridFS which allows you to store files of any size and their metadata as documents inside your database. While there are limits to the size of a MongoDB document (4MB older versions, 16MB in v1.7/1.8, higher limits in the future) there is native support for chunking a file into multiple documents and linking them together. As the GridFS wiki page states, in cases with extra large files, such as videos, this chunking also allows for more efficient range operations which can be very useful for track seeking.

Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

One of the most important considerations in the design of the MongoDB system is performance. It has several optimizations that allow for its blazing performance such as memory-mapped files, pre-allocated data files (which do tend to consume more space than necessary but allows for consistent I/O performance), and a “memory” which can allow for increased performance for identical queries that are ran often. It’s this performance level that makes MongoDB so well-suited for databases which need to handle heavy, rapid queries.

MongoDB Has Become Self-Aware

MongoDB is damned smart. It really is. It is quite possible in a deployment of a MongoDB cluster that you spend very little time actually managing your servers. Should a master server in your cluster go down, MongoDB can automatically negotiate within the cluster to promote a slave server to be a new master in the place of the one that went down. When adding new machines to your cluster to scale, the process can be very automatic, sometimes as simple as telling the cluster about it and letting MongoDB automatically welcome the new server to the gang, balancing the load and distributing your document storage more efficiently.

Tune in next time for…

That’s all for this exciting episode of… well, my blog. Over the coming weeks I’ll be writing more about getting started with MongoDB, mostly from a Python angle, as well as sharing case studies of ways I’m using MongoDB. This discussion of MongoDB should be interesting for anyone else who, like me, know their way around a web application stack but have just started playing around with the newer, less time-proven technologies such as NoSQL database systems.

Although I do now have a desktop running Windows 7 that I primarily use at home, I am still a Mac guy with my MacBook Pro which is used on the go and around the house (can’t carry the desktop to bed with me, or to the kitchen bar while cooking).

I have resisted buying an iPad for the longest time because, although it’s undeniably really cool…it doesn’t serve any real function I can’t already perform some other way. I have a laptop I carry with me basically everywhere anyway, so it doesn’t serve well as an “alternative” to carrying around a computer. As a Computer Science student, I need more from a computer than the iPad can offer.

The iPad is primarily a portable media consumption device. I consume a lot of media, yes, but I can do that on my MacBook Pro and it’s portable as well. Many of the attractive ideas of the iPad can be done with something I already own and already carry with me, like watching movies (my laptop), reading books (Kindle app on my Android), and simple web browsing (either device, really).

Because I’m carrying them anyway, it doesn’t make sense for me to add a new device (especially when it costs so much) to my workflow that doesn’t really offer me any new functionality. True, the iPad does all that it does with more “style” than currently–I mean, iBooks on the iPad clearly would be more engaging than Kindle on my small HTC Incredible screen–but that just isn’t enough for me yet. Especially when I’m a student and the monetary investment in buying an iPad is quite different than if I was making $100k a year somewhere.

That being said, the new iPad 2 is really, really nice. It’s getting closer to being something I might actually buy, but not quite. I still feel like if I were to buy it the new would rub off fairly quickly and I’d be left wondering “Why did I buy this?”

Naturally, me being a dreamer, I can foresee the future when it would make sense for me to have an iPad lying around my house. One day I’ll have a home which is very integrated and the iPad could serve many functions such as controlling lighting, volumes of speakers, air conditioning, etc. These things make sense for having an all-controlling tablet lying around my house. In fact, I wouldn’t mind being involved in developing these kinds of things. Who knows where I’ll end up in my development career. For now, I’ve got a head full of ideas and nothing standing in my way.

I was trying to setup a Django development environment on my MacBook Pro running OS X Lion and I ran into an issue with MySQL-Python. The module couldn’t be imported and gave me an “image not found” error.

After digging around a while on Google I came across this article, which gives a very simple solution. Add the following to your /etc/bashrc:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/mysql/lib/

Works like a charm and got me moving along my way to developing. Good stuff.

According to this article from AOL’s TechCrunch, the increasingly-popular Foursquare has reached 5 million users.

I’m among that 5 million, as are a few of my friends. I’m not particularly loyal, however, to any of these similar services. I have a Foursquare account, a Gowalla account, and of course a Facebook account. With the addition of Facebook Places it makes it very hard for me to keep up with the others.

If I’m even going to keep up with such a service (I always forget to check in places until I’ve left them) it will have to be only one service. I had a Palm Pre for a while and used the Gowalla and Foursquare apps interchangeably—whichever one was working at the time (invariably one of them would not be working correctly). I blame a lot of that on Sprint, however, which is (in my area, at least) absolutely horrible.

Now I am using an HTC Incredible on the Verizon Wireless network and I’ve never been happier. However, I am still torn between Foursquare and the new Facebook Places (it didn’t exist when I had Sprint). Places lacks the “game” nature that Foursquare has going for it and also the horde of venues—but then again Foursquare didn’t launch with every corner store in its database either.

That being said, Foursquare lacks many of my friends. I only have two friends from everyday life who actually use Foursquare—my other friends on there are internet acquaintances. Obviously, my Facebook account contains more of my “real” friends, which makes using Places seem more rewarding. Sure, I don’t unlock accomplishments and badges for my activities but I do have the feeling that it matters more on Places—more of my friends are going to see and possibly comment on the activity.

On Foursquare it feels as if no one really notices—I’m only making a log of my activity for myself. Foursquare, however, feels more fun: collecting points, being rewarded for discovering new places, and earning random badges I didn’t even know existed.

The jury is still out for me. It would be nice if one would collect the check-ins from the other and live on-top of it that way—with the Places API it’s more likely for Foursquare to pull in Places’ data, plus Facebook is not going to give up their stake in the geo-portion of their service.

In the meantime I suppose I’ll just continue as I have been.

Afterthought: Gowalla’s website interface trumps all.

Recently I picked up an Apple Magic Mouse from my local Best Buy to replace the Mighty Mouse I had broken years ago (but since I use a MacBook Pro replacing a mouse wasn’t absolutely critical). I alternate between periods of using my MacBook as a laptop and using it as a desktop solution with external display, mouse, and keyboard.

That being said, when looking for a new mouse I definitely could have went for something a little (or a lot) less expensive than Apple’s $69 multi-touch-enabled “Magic Mouse”. The Magic Mouse has the added benefit of also being wireless, using the Mac’s built-in Bluetooth connection (no ugly USB-connected wireless receivers *cough*Microsoft*cough*) Having an early 2009 15″ MacBook Pro with the multi-touch glass trackpad, I’ve become quite dependent on certain multi-touch functions I could only get by using an Apple mouse.

I went to Best Buy with the intention of purchasing either the Magic Mouse or the Magic Trackpad. Although Best Buy’s website informed me either were available at my local store…they were wrong. Only the mouse was available and so I ended up choosing it.

The Good

This mouse looks amazing. It truly does. But we would expect nothing less from Apple, now would we? It also performs its function exceptionally well. Again, we expect this.

The tracking is incredibly accurate—at high and low velocities the on-screen pointer is always responsive with no lag. Also, the Bluetooth functionality is perfect. I was using the mouse within thirty seconds of taking it out of the packaging. Although the mouse does sleep after a while of you not using it it seems to wake up quickly enough you don’t always notice it was sleeping.

The Bad

As much as we expect Apple products to be amazingly well thought-out and amazing, we also expect there to be things missing or overlooked (multi-tasking in iPhone initially, copy and paste, etc.). The Magic Mouse is no different.

One of the first things I noticed different from the Mighty Mouse I was accustomed to was the lack of side buttons. Unlike the Mighty Mouse, squeezing the sides of the mouse does not engage Exposé. In fact, you simply can’t interact with Exposé with this mouse period. I’m quite addicted to using four fingers up/down on the trackpad to use Exposé. This will take some getting used to.

The mouse, however, is multi-touch—just not as robust as the traditional Apple trackpad. Sliding a finger in any direction across the surface of the mouse will scroll that way, if possible. This is neat, however I’m used to using two fingers to accomplish this. While you can use two fingers on the mouse, it’s not as responsive as if you’d just used one—particularly if your fingers are too close together.

The Magic Mouse is extremely low profile. When using it generally only my fingers are in contact with it—it’s not tall enough to touch the palm of my hand. At times this makes the mouse hard to hold onto when moving it.

At times when executing gestures I accidentally move the entire mouse. Apple obviously planned for this by incorporating two rails on the bottom of the mouse which serve to make the mouse “grip” the surface below tight enough to resist accidental movement—not quite right. This railing seems to fight against you a lot, leaving you with the haptic sensation that you are dragging the mouse across your desk instead of it gliding across.

The Verdict

Is it worth the $69? It really depends on your motivations. For me, it’s more a novelty and a sign that I support Apple. I’m sure there are mice which are just as nice functioning as this one for much less. That being said, it does perform its function well and I am happy with the purchase.

Have a Magic Mouse of your own? Or perhaps you know of a better mouse for the money? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Like hordes of others, today I downloaded and installed the new Kindle for Mac beta.

So far, it’s a very nice app. It is very simple—but this kind of app is perfectly suited for simplicity.

The app took a while to open the first time, but once it loaded I was greeted with a Register screen which allowed me to register the app with my Amazon account and associate it with my Kindle account. The process took only seconds.

Books in your Kindle account are automatically loaded into the “Archived Items” tab, which acts as a sort of bookshelf—books you have access to if you want, but not important enough to be sitting on your desk. When you go to the Archived Items, you download a book to read by double-clicking on your choice. After it has downloaded, the book will automatically be added to your home page and then opened for reading at your farthest read page. As I have been reading a few books on my iPod Touch for a while, it was very nice to have them appear on my MacBook Pro at the exact page I had left in.

Reading in the app is also nice. You can resize the window to get as much text as you want (or don’t want) on the screen at a time. It has support for your bookmarked pages, and the user interface controls are pretty simple. You can use the arrow keys on your keyboard or the scroll wheel of your mouse (or in my case, two-finger scrolling with TouchPad). The mouse/touchpad feature is nice, however it is entirely too sensitive to be used carelessly—you’ll turn five pages before you realize it.

All in all, good job Amazon. There are a few little bugs such as the scrolling problem, but this is Beta software after all. It could be argued that the interface could be nicer, but for what the app is designed for it performs its function well—especially for being beta.

When the Kindle app for iPod/iPhone came out, it opened up the world of Kindle to me. I already owned an iPod which serves so many functions for me—spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated book reader didn’t make financial sense (or cents) for me. However, when the Kindle app was released it was perfect because I was able to enter the Kindle world without any further investment.

And that’s exactly what Kindle for Mac is doing for many more users: opening the world of Kindle up, free of charge, to anyone with an Apple computer.

When I first started developing for Palm I was a bit skeptical of the framework because it seemed thrown together and needed a lot of polish. The most annoying part was (and is) the lack of accurate documentation. Yes, I said accurate. Palm’s Developer website doesn’t offer complete documentation on everything, and even less of it is actually accurate. Often times if you copy-and-paste the sample code into your project it will not work due to either a typo in their code or the fact that the code is from a previous version of the framework and no longer works.

Palm’s own developer forums often are a frustration. If you take a look around you’ll notice a trend: most people’s posts have many more views than replies—which tells me nobody else can help them either. This isn’t to discount the webOS/Mojo ninjas out there—it just grows both aggravating and disappointing. I am currently trudging through writing a follow-up app for my last one, with progress alternating between very quick and very aggravatingly slow (as in, spending an entire day trying to figure out a problem no one has the answer to, and eventually deciding on another path that actually works).

Although this post sounds like a rant, I wouldn’t classify it as one. I haven’t lost faith in Palm. I understand it’s very early in webOS’s lifespan (indeed, the App Catalog itself is still in Beta), and being a developer I can accept that 1.x software is seldom perfect. Although being in the Palm camp this early on is a bit frustrating, seeing the ratings and feedback from your users after your app has finally shipped makes it all worth it.

I wrote a small tester webOS app for Palm Pre a while back and submitted it to Palm to be in the App Catalog. I didn’t even notice until today, but evidently my app, gChords Free, was published in the app catalog a few days ago. So far it’s managing pretty good reviews.

If you’ve read a single blog post on my site you know music is a huge part of my life. I’m a double musician (piano/guitar) going to school for music production technology with an emphasis in composition. However, I am (and have always been) heavily involved in technology—particularly web development. Naturally, these things all mesh together. I have music playing (or am playing it) at literally every possible second of my day. If I’m awake 16 hours in a day probably at least 13 hours of it involved music somehow. However, the type of music playing depends on what I’m doing.

Designing

Typically if I’m designing I’m listening to ‘creative’ music. Typically these are the songs that would get me the weirdest looks by people if they were around. Admittedly, a lot of this music is weird but that’s exactly why I choose to listen to it: it’s different. When I’m designing I’m obviously trying to think creatively and flowing. Metaphorically, I enjoy the creative, flowing avant-gardé nature of the music, but also appreciate the underlying structure which typically adheres to the rules of music. This is exactly the way good design is! Refreshing, flowing, and different, but while adhering to the standards of design—both social and natural laws such as line-width and -height.

Typically when I get an album that inspires me, I stick to it for a while until it doesn’t. For a while this was The White Stripes’ Get Behind Me Satan, which is still a monumental album in its rawness. For a while it was Jack White’s other band The Raconteurs and their second album. It truly depends on my mood at the time but others I’ve listened to while designing: Chevelle, Counting Crows, Dave Matthews, The Derek Trucks Band (check out their new album Already Free now), Evanescence, Five for Fighting, Hootie & the Blowfish, James Morrison, Jamie Cullum (this is a relatively new find for me), John Mayer, Kings of Leon, and even Tenacious D.

Coding

Writing code is another story. Arguably, the process of writing code is typically not as creative as designing, assuming you are coding an existing design. Coding is often simply repetitive tasks. Music I listen to during this phase of development typically reflects this. Often I’ll listen to music that, though sometimes repetitive, has a driving force that “pushes” me along. Examples include: NIN’s Ghosts albums, Blue Man Group (haha, yes), Deftones, Kasabian, The Killers, Rage Against the Machine, She Wants Revenge, and System of a Down. You’ll notice most of these are “heavier” than the ones I listen to while coding. Quite literally, I need that extra drive to fuel long, boring coding spells.

Feedback

What about you? What inspires you to creativity, or pushes you to develop your work?

Among the sacrifices Apple had to make to fit the Pro hardware into a 13″ unibody case was the loss of the Line-In port. All MacBook models aside the 13″ MacBook Pro have two ports–one dedicated to sound input and one for sound output. With the new MacBook Pro 13″ model, Apple combined these ports into one single “audio” port which performs both functions, albeit one at a time.

True to Apple’s nature, they’ve made switching between the functions easy to do. Simply go to the Sound pane in System Preferences and change it from the dropdown box:

Simple, but annoying. The other day I had my electric guitar and wanted to amp it through my friend’s MacBook Pro 13″ but I ran into this problem: if I plugged my guitar directly in using the audio port as Line-In I couldn’t connect his laptop to a sound system–meaning I was forced to use the Mac’s built-in speakers to hear my guitar. Lame! Obviously this could have been remedied by using an external audio interface, but that’s still inconvenient.

Sigh.