Mongodb Tutorials and Courses Worth Taking
By: Jana Bergant
Tags: Web Development, Coursera, NoSQL, Mongodb, Udemy Review

I’m reviewing courses and tutorials for you. I’ve been a developer for 20 years now and only one thing is true. The only way to be successful is if you are passionate about what you do and if you like to learn.

Today I’ll review the best paths to learn MongoDb for you.

Video version of the article:

MongoDb is a NoSQL database.

It’s

object-oriented,

simple,

dynamic, and

scalable.

It’s for you if you need high performance, high availability, and automatic scaling.

It’s for you if your data has no specific structure, if there are not many relations, and if you don’t need to perform complex transactions.

It’s also not recommended for systems where the data model is designed upfront. And it’s not suitable for tightly coupled systems.

The courses we’ll review are courses from MongoDB University, then Udemy courses, and Coursera courses.

Let’s start with Coursera. Coursera courses are usually higher quality courses. These courses are from the MongoDb company itself. There are two courses you can take.

The first one is Introduction to MongoDb and the other one MongoDb Aggregation Framework.

Both take 3 weeks to complete. The good part about the Coursera courses is that you can take them for free if you don’t need a certificate.

The first one is for you if you are a beginner. You’ll start with the basics, with the installation of the MongoDb and Compass. Compass is the Gui for mongoDB. You’ll connect to Atlas, the cloud provider for MongoDb and you’ll use the Aggregation Framework to analyze data stored in MongoDB. In the second week, you’ll go deeper into the Aggregation Framework and web applications. You’ll work with a sample Mflix database. And finally, you’ll work with MonoDb spatial data.

For work, you’ll use Jupyter Notebook. If you are not familiar with Jupyter Notebook, you‘ll get lost, since the course assumes you are used to working with it.

Some explanations in the course are not really clear, you might need to rewatch them.

With the MongoDB Aggregation Framework course, you get a good introduction to Aggregation. The first two weeks will teach you about Aggregation and what you can do with it. The third week is more focused on using MongoDB in machine learning applications. It teaches less MongoDB specific content. You’ll be performing machine learning algorithms directly in MongoDB using the Aggregation Framework. And you’ll prepare data for machine learning algorithms in Python. Also, you’ll analyze data stored in MongoDB so machine learning can be performed on the data. The course will give you an introduction to linear regression, decision trees, and clustering algorithms. The course isn’t in-depth enough to be a good introduction to machine learning, but it’s a good way to practice the tools you’ve learned in the course.

MongoDB — The Complete Developer’s Guide 2020 from Maximilian Schwarzmüller

Now let’s go to the Udemy course MongoDB — The Complete Developer’s Guide 2020 from Maximilian Schwarzmüller, one of my favorite instructors. It has a rating of 4.7 out of 5 from almost 10K students. That is great!

It has 17 hours of content. Content includes basics & CRUD operations. You’ll learn about the structure of documents, the schema. You’ll also use MongoDB Compass to explore data visually. You’ll be working with indexes, geospatial data, and aggregation framework. And you’ll also dive into security, performance, replicas & sharding. This is a super useful content. You’ll be deploying to a server, use MongoDB Atlas, and more.

As always Maximilian does an excellent job explaining stuff, with great attention to detail. That is why he is one of the top instructors on Udemy. The best part of this course is the Q&A. Maximilian is super responsive. Just look at this. All questions have the answer. This question was posted an hour ago and it is already answered. That is what I call great support. And this is what you need when you are learning a new skill. You need someone to help you when you get stuck.

The last resource is the University from MongoDB Inc. University provides free courses that will teach you how to develop for and administer MongoDB quickly and efficiently. It’s taught by the same instructors as on Coursera, the MongoDB founders themselves.

The team at MongoDB University continually reviews the current and planned courses to ensure that content reflects the latest MongoDB technologies. That is a big plus of the courses.

You can get certified for 150$. Certifications are available for Database Administrator and for a Developer.

I’m not going to say these certificates will help you. They can help you in boosting your self-esteem. But the courses are really worth taking.

You’ll have practice and you’ll get grades in a final exam. Your grade for the course will depend on your performance on labs and the final exam.

You will receive a proof of completion if you achieve a grade of 65% or better.

Courses consist of videos, written instruction, and lab work. Instructors are nice and friendly, although many videos you’ll need to watch several times as they speed through code examples. I would prefer some more explanations. You have a discussion forum where you can get answers if you get stuck. But the team does not answer regularly.

University suggests a learning path for a developer and one for a database administrator. As a developer, you start with the basics of MongoDB and administration. Then you learn to analyze data with Aggregation Framework, you create an app with the language of choice. You can choose between Python, Java, and Javascript. Later on, you optimize for the performance of deployment and you learn a data modeling methodology.

In the Database administration path, you start with the MongoDb basics and basic administration, then you optimize for the performance of deployment. You learn how to secure a cluster and debug a deployment.

So what would I do if I were you?

I would go to MongoDb University and select a track for me. A developer or a database administration path. Then I would see. If the explanations are too fast for me, then I would go and get the Udemy course from Maximillian. He will give you the support you need. Maybe I would even start with an Udemy course and then go to MongoDb University.

And If I was interested in knowing how MongoDb can help with machine learning then the Coursera’s Aggregation framework course would be my answer. But the Coursera’s Aggregation framework would only come after I knew the basics of MongoDB.

So, this is it. You can start now. Go to MongoDb University and start learning. If you prefer to have all topics in one class then Udemy class is the one for you. If you want a taste of Machine learning then Coursera is your way to go. Coursera is always the answer when the topic is machine learning.

Anyways, have a great day, and keep learning.