Quick Start: BSON Data Types - ObjectId

In the database world, it is frequently important to have unique identifiers associated with a record. In a legacy, tabular database, these unique identifiers are often used as primary keys.

In the database world, it is frequently important to have unique identifiers associated with a record. In a legacy, tabular database, these unique identifiers are often used as primary keys. In a modern database, such as MongoDB, we need a unique identifier in an _id field as a primary key as well. MongoDB provides an automatic unique identifier for the _id field in the form of an ObjectId data type.

For those that are familiar with MongoDB Documents you've likely come across the ObjectId data type in the _id field. For those unfamiliar with MongoDB Documents, the ObjectId datatype is automatically generated as a unique document identifier if no other identifier is provided. But what is an ObjectId field? What makes them unique? This post will unveil some of the magic behind the BSON ObjectId data type. First, though, what is BSON?

Binary JSON (BSON)

Many programming languages have JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) support or similar data structures. MongoDB uses JSON documents to store records. However, behind the scenes, MongoDB represents these documents in a binary-encoded format called BSON. BSON provides additional data types and ordered fields to allow for efficient support across a variety of languages. One of these additional data types is ObjectId.

Makeup of an ObjectId

Let's start with an examination of what goes into an ObjectId. If we take a look at the construction of the ObjectId value, in its current implementation, it is a 12-byte hexadecimal value.

data analysis

Data science is omnipresent to advanced statistical and machine learning methods. For whatever length of time that there is data to analyse, the need to investigate is obvious.

Tableau Data Analysis Tips and Tricks. Master the one of the most powerful data analytics tool with some handy shortcut and tricks.

Analysis, Price Modeling and Prediction: AirBnB Data for Seattle. A detailed overview of AirBnB’s Seattle data analysis using Data Engineering & Machine Learning techniques.

DISCLAIMER: absolutely subjective point of view, for the official definition check out vocabularies or Wikipedia. And come on, you wouldn’t read an entire article just to get the definition.

Suppose you are looking to book a flight ticket for a trip of yours. Now, you will not go directly to a specific site and book the first ticket that you see.