Map-Reduce

Map-Reduce

Map-reduce is a data processing paradigm for condensing large volumes of data into useful aggregated results. For map-reduce operations, MongoDB provides the mapReduce database command. Consider the following map-reduce operation.

Diagram of the annotated map-reduce operation.

In this map-reduce operation, MongoDB applies the map phase to each input document (i.e. the documents in the collection that match the query condition). The map function emits key-value pairs. For those keys that have multiple values, MongoDB applies the reduce phase, which collects and condenses the aggregated data. MongoDB then stores the results in a collection. Optionally, the output of the reduce function may pass through a finalize function to further condense or process the results of the aggregation.

All map-reduce functions in MongoDB are JavaScript and run within the mongod process. Map-reduce operations take the documents of a single collection as the input and can perform any arbitrary sorting and limiting before beginning the map stage. mapReduce can return the results of a map-reduce operation as a document, or may write the results to collections. The input and the output collections may be sharded.

For most aggregation operations, the Aggregation Pipeline provides better performance and more coherent interface. However, map-reduce operations provide some flexibility that is not presently available in the aggregation pipeline.

Map-Reduce JavaScript Functions – In MongoDB, map-reduce operations use custom JavaScript functions to map, or associate, values to a key. If a key has multiple values mapped to it, the operation reduces the values for the key to a single object. The use of custom JavaScript functions provide flexibility to map-reduce operations. For instance, when processing a document, the map function can create more than one key and value mapping or no mapping. Map-reduce operations can also use a custom JavaScript function to make final modifications to the results at the end of the map and reduce operation, such as perform additional calculations.

Map-Reduce Behavior – In MongoDB, the map-reduce operation can write results to a collection or return the results inline. If you write map-reduce output to a collection, you can perform subsequent map-reduce operations on the same input collection that merge replace, merge, or reduce new results with previous results.

When returning the results of a map reduce operation inline, the result documents must be within the BSON Document Size limit, which is currently 16 megabytes. MongoDB supports map-reduce operations on sharded collections. Map-reduce operations can also output the results to a sharded collection.

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