Document-Oriented Database

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What Does Document-Oriented Database Mean?

A document-oriented database is a specific kind of database that works on the principle of dealing with ‘documents’ rather than strictly defined tables of information.

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The document-oriented database plays an important role is aggregating data from documents and getting them into a searchable, organized form.

Techopedia Explains Document-Oriented Database

A document-oriented database, as a particular kind of NoSQL database, is able to ‘parse’ data from documents that store that data under certain ‘keys,’ with sophisticated support for retrieval.

For example, suppose one document has two names, one address, and a list of ages of a home’s occupants. A second document might have four names, two addresses, and no age information. A document-oriented database will take the data in both and store them according to type, able to handle non-fixed length data sets.

Different document-oriented database products are available, some of them with free Apache licensing and other with proprietary licensing.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.