MongoDB Certified: Best Practices for ETL Tools

Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) tools/applications that provide support for MongoDB should conform
to the following Best Practices for certification against MongoDB Enterprise.
● MongoDB Enterprise: https://www.mongodb.com/products/downloads/mongodb-enterprise

Security
Authentication
Application should support the ability to connect to a running MongoDB deployment that utilizes
built-in authentication. Specifically, tools should provide the ability for users to specify a valid username
and password to authenticate against MongoDB. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/authentication/#mongodb-cr-authentication

Application should support the ability to connect to a running MongoDB deployment that utilizes
Kerberos (external) authentication. Specifically, tools should provide the ability for users to specify their
Kerberos username and password to authenticate to the external authentication provider, via
MongoDB. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/authentication/#kerberos-authentication

Encryption
Application should support the ability to connect to a running MongoDB deployment that utilizes SSL
to encrypt data in-transit between the application and the database. Tools should provide users the
ability to connect with or without an SSL certificate. Users should be able to supply a CA or self-signed
certificate and connect to the MongoDB deployment. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/configure-ssl/

Connections
Application should connect to MongoDB deployments using the standard connection string URI
format. Application should support the ability to connect to (i) an individual mongod process, (ii) a
MongoDB replica set (using auto-discovery), or (iii) a mongos as a frontend to a sharded cluster. For
more information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/connection-string/

Upon connection construction application should expose all possible MongoDB Read Preferences to
the end user. For more information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/read-preference/

Application should function as expected when authenticating as a user with read-only

roles/permissions. For more information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/user-
privileges/#read
Extract, Transform
Application should provide users the ability to easily map JSON elements within documents to
downstream data structures. Specifically, application should support the ability to unwind simple arrays
or represent embedded documents using appropriate data relationships (e.g. one-to-one, one-to-many,
many-to-many). For more information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/data-model-
design/ and http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/applications/data-models-relationships/

Application should infer schema information by examining a subset of documents within target
collections.

Application should allow users to add fields to discovered data model that may not have been
present within the subset of documents used for schema inference.

Application should infer information about existing indexes for collections to be queried. For more
information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/list-indexes/

Application should prompt and/or warn users of queries that do not contain any indexed fields. Note:
simple field matching is appropriate, there is no need to execute a query explain plan in the background.
For more information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/query-optimization/#query-
optimization

Application should support the ability to return a subset of fields from documents using query
projections. For more information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/project-fields-
from-query-results/

For queries against MongoDB Replica Sets, application should support the ability to specify custom
MongoDB Read Preferences for individual query operations. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/read-preference/

Application should infer information about sharded cluster deployments and note the shard key
fields for each sharded collection. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/method/sh.status/

For queries against MongoDB Sharded Clusters, application should strongly warn the user against
queries that do not use proper query isolation. Broadcast queries in a sharded cluster can have a
negative impact on database performance. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/sharding-shard-key/#querying

Load
Application should support the ability to write data to any MongoDB deployment whether single
node, replica set or sharded cluster.
 For writes to a MongoDB sharded cluster, application should inform and/or display an error message
to the user if documents do not contain a shard key. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/sharding-shard-key/#shard-key

Application should allow users to set a custom WriteConcern for any and all write operations to a
running MongoDB deployment. For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/write-concern/

For bulk loading operations, application should support writing documents in batches using the
insert() method (and provide support for ordered and unordered operations with MongoDB 2.6 and
above). For more information, refer to http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/bulk-inserts/#use-the-
insert-method and http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/command/insert/#insert

For bulk update operations with MongoDB 2.6 and above, application should support the bulk update
database command (which supports ordered and unordered operations). For more information, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/command/update/#dbcmd.update

For bulk loading into a MongoDB sharded deployment, application should leverage best practices for
bulk inserts into a sharded collection. Specifically, this includes pre-splitting the collection’s shard key
and inserting via multiple mongos processes. For more informaiton, refer to
http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/bulk-inserts/#bulk-inserts-on-sharded-clusters