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I have a web application that uses MongoDB as primary database. This is the first project I do with a NoSQL DB. I'm trying to create the application model but I'm confused. I know NoSQL databases are non-normalized and it is normal to replicate data avoiding joins (which are not supported) but I'm now thinking of this scenario:

I have the User class containing email address and the user can change it in the profile page. This email address is displayed in a few pages in different environments and I think the right choice is to embed this property in a few class documents (ex.: product subscription, invoice, shopping cart, ... ).

What if the user changes his email address? Do I have to trigger multiple updates to change every collection, every document that embeds this property?

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  • I know NoSql are non-normalized and it is normal to replicate data avoiding joins (that are not supported) -- Disregarding normalization because joins are not supported does not sound like a very good idea to me. You can simulate joins in a NoSql database; you just have to write code, that's all. Us old-timers have had joins as a native capability in our databases for ages; we wonder why anyone would ever want to do without them. Apr 4, 2014 at 16:24
  • Would you change the email address associated with a paid invoice? Robert Harvey is right. You're going to have to create code to make the changes as needed?
    – JeffO
    Apr 4, 2014 at 17:02

1 Answer 1

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If i understand your question right...

For an example:

User Model: 
    {
     name: String,
     email: String
     ...
     ...
    }

other models (product subscription, invoice, shopping cart) will have ref. to User model, for example Invoice Model:

{
 name: String,
 amount: Number,
 date: Date
 ...
 ...
 _user: { type: ObjectID, ref: 'UserModel'}
}

then when you fetching data for models that have user reference you can populate _user, and have current user object into data that you are fetching from db.

You don't need to store user data in every single model only _id with reference to User Model. With this implementation you only need to update your User collection.

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