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Software Engineering vocabulary · Databases and Persistence

Collection

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/kəˈlɛkʃən/nounCommon term

In software engineering, collection means: In a document database such as MongoDB, a group of documents stored together, similar to a table in a relational database.

In Turkish: koleksiyon

How it is used

Unlike a table, a collection does not force every document to have the same fields, although schema validation can be added. You create, drop, query and index collections; MongoDB creates a collection automatically when you first insert into it.

Example sentences

  1. Each user's settings are stored as one document in the settings collection.

  2. A typo in the collection name created a new, empty collection in production.

Common collocations

  • create a collection
  • query a collection
  • collection name
  • documents in a collection
  • document databaseA NoSQL database that stores each item as a self-contained document, usually in a JSON-like format, so related data can be kept together without fixed tables.
  • NoSQLA broad group of databases that do not use the classic table-and-SQL model, storing data as documents, key-value pairs, wide columns or graphs instead.
  • tableA structure in a relational database that stores data about one kind of thing in rows and columns, for example all customers or all orders.
  • schemaThe structure of a database: its tables, columns, data types, keys and relationships. In some products it is also a named group of tables inside a database.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Databases and Persistence

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