Are you fluent in MongoDB? Well today is your lucky day. Microsoft’s NoSQL document database service DocumentDB now supports drivers for MongoDB. So if you were using existing MongoDB tools and libraries, you can now use them with DocumentDB and take advantage of Microsoft’s cloud architecture.
Even better, you can build a hybrid infrastructure with DocumentDB and another MongoDB-compatible database service. This is available starting today in preview.
Ironically, Microsoft used Parse in one of its slides to demonstrate how you could use MongoDB support. Parse-powered apps can communicate with DocumentDB using MongoDB instructions. But Facebook is shutting down Parse. Fear not! Microsoft also lets you move your Parse server to Azure, so everything makes sense in some way.
DocumentDB is Microsoft’s take on JSON-based NoSQL document databases. Customers can choose different performance levels and even assign a better performance level for just a collection while leaving other collections on a lower tier.
Also new today, DocumentDB now lets you replicate data in multiple regions. DocumentDB has been available in multiple data centers across the world, but it looks like you can now take advantage of that by building a very responsive database spread across multiple data centers.
Finally, Microsoft is tweaking the price of DocumentDB. The company didn’t go into much detail at Microsoft Build today, so it’s going to be interesting to see if DocumentDB is getting cheaper or can work for bigger customers.
