MongoDB to term mapping

The commonly used MongoDB terminology and concepts are mapped to the equivalent terminology and concepts.

The following table provides a summary of commonly used MongoDB terms and their conceptual equivalents.

Table 1. MongoDB concepts mapped to one or more concepts.
MongoDB concept	concept	Description
collection	table	This is the same concept. In this type of collection is sometimes referred to as a JSON collection. A JSON collection is similar to a relational database table, except it does not enforce a schema.
document	record	This is the same concept. In , this type of document is sometimes referred to as a JSON document.
field	column	This is the same concept.
master / slave	primary server / secondary server	This is the same concept. However, secondary servers have additional capabilities. For example, data on a secondary server can be updated and propagated to primary servers.
replica set	high-availability cluster	This is the same concept. However, when the replica set is updated, it is then sent to all servers, not only to the primary server.
sharded cluster	shard cluster	This is the same concept. In , a shard cluster is a group of servers (sometimes called shard servers) that contain sharded data.
shard key	shard key	This is the same concept.