Document-Oriented Database Management System

A document-oriented database management system stores information as self-contained documents, most often encoded in formats such as JSON, BSON or XML, rather than dividing each record across fixed rows and columns the way a relational table does. Each document can carry its own set of fields and nested structures, so the shape of the data can vary from one record to the next and evolve without a coordinated schema migration across the whole dataset. An application typically addresses a document by a unique key and reads or indexes it as a single unit, which suits naturally hierarchical content such as user profiles, catalog entries or logged events, favoring flexibility and horizontal scaling over the strict tabular consistency a relational system enforces.