Graeme Robinson on foojay.io - Friends of OpenJDK

Aggregation Optimization in MongoDB: Unnecessary Unwinds (Part 2)

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:01:00 +0000

And why MongoDB might be a better relational database than you ever realized.

Design reviews are one-on-one meetings where MongoDB experts deliver advice on data modeling best practices and application design challenges. In this series, we are going to explore common real-life scenarios where design reviews helped developers achieve meaningful success with MongoDB.

This article was written by Graeme Robinson. Find him on LinkedIn .

In Part 1 of this series , we described a use case based on a recent design review I conducted with a team at a MongoDB customer. The team in question was new to MongoDB, and the approach they had taken to both modeling their data and then subsequently querying it was very “RDBMS-like.” As a result, query performance was significantly slower than their SLA called for.

Aggregation Optimization in MongoDB: A Case Study From the Field (Part 1)

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 13:17:32 +0000

And why MongoDB might be a better relational database than you ever realized.

This article was written by Graeme Robinson. Find him on LinkedIn .

MongoDB is often described as a non-relational database, but whenever we store data in a database, there are relationships within that data. Depending on the type of database we use, though, how we model those relationships may change. As my colleague Rick Houlihan has often pointed out , there really is no such thing as non-relational data.

Event-Driven Architecture in Java and Kafka

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:35:42 +0000

Reactive Java is well suited to modern streaming, event driven applications. In this article, we’ll walk through an example of such an application using Reactive Java with MongoDB. Specifically, we’re going to cover:

Why Reactive Java was introduced and how it differs from more traditional Java programming.
Details of some of the key elements of Reactive Java - Mono , Flux and flatMap.
A walk through of a sample application, comparing a Reactive version of the code using the Reactive Streams MongoDB driver, with a more traditional version of the code using the synchronous MongoDB driver.

Streaming Data - The Air Traffic Control Example.

As a key part of global initiatives to modernize national airspace systems, many national aviation authorities have introduced mandates requiring most non-military aircraft transmit GPS based location data using a system known as Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast, or “ADS-B”.