8 Benefits of Using Morphia
In recent years, NoSQL databases have grown in popularity.
Gartner data highlights how cloud databases have now surpassed over $39.2 billion in annual revenue.
One especially popular database is MongoDB, which has been aiding software programmers since 2007.
For MongoDB users, Morphia is one of the most beneficial tools that help make it easier for programmers and other users to navigate through documents.
Here are eight specific benefits of using Morphia
1. Provides Targeted Use
Morphia was initially created as a MongoDB project and granted to its user base in late 2018.
It provides targeted use as a programming interface or a wrapper for MongoDB, making it easier and more straightforward to create complex objects that can be stored across multiple collections.
2. Morphia Acts as an ODM
Another term to call it would be Object Document Model or an ODM, which is a way to represent a webpage in a structured hierarchical way.
As an ODM, it provides annotations that will allow programmers to outline indexes for a collection to be defined alongside similar mapping data on an entity’s source.
3. Index Support Through Annotations
According to MongoDB another major benefit of using Morphia is that it offers indexing support directly through annotations.
Indexes can be used on each field for either single field indexing or at the class level for cases of compound indexes.
These include annotations such as @Index, @Field, @IndexOptions, @Collation, and @Indexed.
4. Allows Transparent Referencing
Additionally, MongoDB highlights that Morphia also allows for transparent referencing.
You can use it to reference documents from a separate collection instead of directly embedding them.
Programmers won’t have to take care of loading the data from multiple collections behind the scene, because it’s something that Morphia automatically handles.
5. Requires Simple Set Up
Morphia is easy to get the hang of, and there are also in-depth resources on Github that lists packages, prerequisites, and tips that will guide you through the entire process starting from the Brew Tap Command to more advanced operations such as aggregation, projection, and schema validation.
6. Unified MongoDB System
To use Morphia, you will need to be connected to a MongoDB database.
Fortunately, this is a simple feat through MongoDB Atlas, which is the application data platform provided by MongoDB.
From there, you can easily deploy a free cluster, find your connection string, and then store it in an environment variable.
7. Retains Its Relevance
Most use cases are already covered by the native Java Driver, and some programmers will most likely have a few tips and tricks for JavaScript like those listed in our article.
Still, there are some use cases that will necessitate Morphia as the best solution.
Some of these instances include referencing and indexing.
That said, Morphia is likely to stay relevant.
8. Easier Mapping
Lastly, Morphia is more forgiving when it comes to mapping.
Besides providing a number of annotations that allow you to customize, it can map non-string keyed maps as fields as well.
This also helps us map varying document structures – something like a discriminator.
After all, its original goal is to provide easy mapping to Plain Old Java Objects (POJO).
Conclusion
Overall, Morphia is a rich and powerful library that provides additional value to the table.
It offers several key features such as referencing and annotation-based indexing, which programmers can utilize to work with complex data structures in a fast and efficient manner.
Morphia is also written in JavaScript, making it versatile and useful for integration with several web apps.