Sitecore and xDB – Setting up MongoDB on your developer machine

With Sitecore 7.5, Sitecore introduces xDB – the new MongoDB based DMS database. But before you say “oh no, yet another technology I have to deal with”, you should know that working with MongoDB is very easy. In fact it is easier than working with SQL Server.

STEP 1: DOWNLOAD MONGODB

Go to http://www.mongodb.org/downloads and download the 64 bit .zip file. Unzip the files in a directory on your computer.
I installed mine at c:\mongodb

STEP 2: SET UP THE SITECORE CONNECTIONSTRINGS.CONFIG

It is very likely that the Sitecore 7.5 (and Sitecore 8.x) connectionstrings.config are already set up correctly. If not look for the following lines, they need to point to your local machine:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<connectionStrings>
  <!--
    Sitecore connection strings.
    All database connections for Sitecore are configured here.
  -->
  ...
  ...
  ...
  <add name="analytics" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/analytics" />
  <add name="tracking.live" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_live" />
  <add name="tracking.history" connectionString="mongodb://localhost/tracking_history" />
  ...
</connectionStrings>

STEP 3: CREATE A .BAT FILE TO START UP MONGO

To start up mongo you need to run mongod.exe with a parameter determining where Mongo should put the database files. Create a .bat file with the following contents:

c:\MongoDB\bin\mongod.exe –dbpath “[yourfilepath]”

Replace c:\MongoDB\bin\ with the path to your Mongo files, and [yourfilepath] with the path to the folder where you would like to put your MongoDB databases.

You will need one .bat file for each of your Sitecore projects, as you would like to store a separate set of files per Sitecore.

STEP 4: START SITECORE AND ENJOY LIFE

To start up Sitecore, you run the .bat file and fire up your Sitecore and you are now running Sitecore with xDB on a local instance.

Sitecore 8 technical preview with MongoDB running

MORE TO READ:

• Launch Mongo DB with Sitecore Pipelines by Thomas Stern