Since MongoDB has a flexible and not rigidly constrained schema, every developer or database administrator needs a powerful tool to work with the data efficiently and analyze it with ease.

One of the tools that help understand the underlying data stored in collections is MongoDB Compass — a GUI application which eliminates the need for connecting to the Mongo shell or learning the MongoDB query syntax. It comes with a rich collection of features: you can explore/edit/add/remove your data, build aggregation pipelines interactively, implement data validation and evaluate the performance of a particular collection or a database.

The tool is delivered in three versions — Community, Enterprise and Enterprise Read-Only. Pick one that suits you best. All versions run smoothly on Windows and Mac OS X.

You can download and install this application by following the steps from this guide.

Testing the tool

Let’s see how well Compass handles visualizing the data. We’ll get acquainted with the main functionality and perform some of the basic exploratory analysis tasks.

Overview of interface components

Once you run Compass, you’ll find yourself at the landing page.