Mark Embling

Lately I've noticed that JSON and dates/times do not go together well. JSON allows integers, fractional numbers, strings, arrays and so on, but no way to natively specify a point in time. It turns out this relatively minor-sounding point can cause a fair bit more pain than it probably should.

Recently I've been working on a couple of sites on-and-off in my spare time which both have a couple of things in common: they both use MongoDB as a data store and both incorporate the concept of tagging. Using MongoDB's map-reduce functionality is ideal for getting the list of tags, but it does come with its own set of potential issues which are well worth bearing in mind.

In December I posted about MongoDB and using it within .NET applications. I had always intended to post one (or more) follow-up posts but various things conspired against me causing it never to happen. Well, now that time is over and I thought it was about time I explored another MongoDB .NET driver.

Document databases are quite a hot topic at the moment, what with the release of RavenDB and continued presence and interest surrounding MongoDB and CouchDB. However, I've pretty much settled on MongoDB as my document database of choice, despite the promise (and actual goodness) of RavenDB.

I've noticed with interest the 'NoSQL' movement which seems to have arrived recently and have on the whole ignored it. I generally find myself getting on well with relational databases and based on that fact (and the fact they are so commonly used), I have not looked into any of the alternatives. However, I have recently read various articles talking in particularly about CouchDB and MongoDB and after reading a little bit about both, I decided to give MongoDB a closer look.