MySQL :: Develop By Example – New MySQL Document Store Series

Examples are a great way to learn new things. As many of you may or may not know we’ve added some new things to MySQL Server 5.7.12 and the ecosystem around it, extending it to allow you to use the MySQL as a Document Store. Meeting the challenge meant expanding Developer Interfaces and Database tools.

Addressing information with a both classic and modern data architectures
For all types of data – structured, semi, and unstructured
Empowering developers – Simpler, Faster, Flexible
Leveraging latest NoSQL oriented tools/methods – JavaScript, Node.js, JSON, CRUD, Methods chaining, and more

From the developer side the MySQL Document Store new APIs by introducing a JSON/Document Store oriented called the MySQL X DevAPI. This programming API provides the option for accessing MySQL; and its design unifies JSON document and table access; and it includes SQL support as well. Since the API features a popular fluent interface style, you will be able to use a NoSQL-like syntax to execute Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) operations against these documents.

This new API is provided to developers in our latest MySQL Connectors. As again as learning by example is often the best way to get started with new things we’re also providing an example application we’re calling Movie Review to show you how it’s used in real applications with use cases that likely map to how you’d want to develop.

As there are a range of languages supported by the MySQL Connectors and Drivers – New Connector/Node.js as well as connectors for Java, Python, .NET, C, C++, and PHP – we plan to do Movie Review examples applications across the various languages.
Were calling our new example application – Movie Review – and as you might have guessed it revolves around developing web applications that allows users to review movies via a simple application that demonstrates the usage of the new features available in the X Dev API and connectors.

We will have 2 user types within the application – users and administrators.

The users can:

Search for a movie to view its description and any existing reviews
Review a movie
Update or delete a review they have written

The administrators can:

See the movies to view its description and any existing reviews
Upload new information to the database manually or from a JSON file
View the current data in the collections to edit it or delete it
View some simple reports.

With these use cases we hope to quickly and simply take you through the key development concepts quickly using CRUD type programming.

The Document Store Data Model

Since the application will be kept simple, we’re also including simple document store database you can easy load. It includes four collections: Actors, Movies, Reviews, and Users. It comes with the entire example data loaded that you’ll need as well. This will help to teach you some of the basics of document store style modeling.

We’ll provide the steps to install, etc in the example blogs and have you up and running and developing with MySQL Document Store in no time.

See you in the next blog post – where we get into the Movie Review application written with Node.js.