Looking to unlock real-time insights from your MongoDB data - without slowing down your production environment? With CrateDB Cloud’s new MongoDB CDC integration, you can seamlessly stream database changes in real time, transforming fresh operational data into actionable analytics instantly. That means no complex ETL pipelines, no performance overhead, and a clear path to faster decisions and deeper visibility across your data ecosystem, thanks to CrateDB’s columnar storage and distributed SQL engine.
But how does MongoDB CDC in CrateDB Cloud make this possible? Let’s take a closer look at why operational databases like MongoDB aren’t built for fast, complex analytics - and how streaming change data into CrateDB Cloud removes those bottlenecks.
Operational databases like MongoDB excel at transactional workloads, often using document- or row-oriented architectures. While this design is ideal for rapid reads and writes, it isn’t optimized for large-scale analytics or search. As a result, running extensive queries directly on MongoDB can be slow and resource-intensive, potentially impacting the performance of both analytical tasks and your primary application.
With the managed MongoDB CDC (Change Data Capture) integration in CrateDB Cloud, you can now seamlessly stream changes from MongoDB in real time. This allows you to:
This feature is now available as a public preview, giving early adopters the opportunity to test, explore, and provide feedback before the general release.
Change Data Capture (CDC) is a method for tracking and streaming real-time changes from a database. Instead of relying on batch ETL jobs that periodically extract and load data, CDC continuously captures inserts, updates, and deletes as they happen. This enables downstream systems to react in real time - whether for analytics, reporting, or other applications.
CDC with MongoDB works by leveraging the Oplog, a special capped collection in MongoDB that records all operations modifying the database. When an insert, update, or delete occurs, the change is logged in the Oplog as part of MongoDB’s built-in replication mechanism.
A CDC process monitors this Oplog, capturing changes as they happen and propagating them to other systems. This ensures that other databases, data warehouses, or analytics platforms always have near real-time updates—without requiring the source MongoDB instance to be queried directly.
With MongoDB CDC integration in CrateDB Cloud, changes in your MongoDB database are automatically streamed into CrateDB, ensuring that your analytical workloads always operate on the latest data.
The ability to replicate and analyze fresh operational MongoDB data opens up new possibilities across various use cases:
Real-Time Analytics
Run ad-hoc SQL queries and aggregations on MongoDB data the moment it’s generated, delivering up-to-the-second insights with minimal overhead.
Seamless BI Integrations
Effortlessly connect Grafana, Tableau, Superset, or your favorite BI tools to CrateDB Cloud, enabling user-friendly dashboards and data exploration on fresh data.
Operational Dashboards
Power live dashboards that track critical business metrics—such as user activity, inventory levels, or financial transactions—and instantly adapt to changing conditions.
Hybrid Transactional/Analytical Processing (HTAP)
Offload analytical queries from MongoDB while maintaining a high-performance, real-time analytical layer in CrateDB Cloud, ensuring optimal performance for both transactional and analytical workloads.
By combining MongoDB’s operational strength with CrateDB Cloud’s analytics power, you can maintain top-tier performance for both transactional and analytical workloads.
Setting up MongoDB CDC integration with CrateDB Cloud is simple and requires just a few steps.
Ensure MongoDB Compatibility
Your MongoDB instance must support change streams (MongoDB 4.0+ for replica sets or 5.0+ for sharded clusters).
Create a CrateDB Cloud Account
Sign up for a free tier or log in if you already have an account.
Deploy a cluster and note the connection details.
Create a MongoDB CDC Integration
Link your MongoDB instance and CrateDB Cloud by providing connection details and credentials
Define data mappings to specify how MongoDB collections are translated into CrateDB tables (schemas can be inferred automatically).
Start Streaming Data
Once configured, changes in MongoDB will flow into CrateDB in real time, ready for SQL queries, aggregations, and search.
For a detailed walkthrough visit our documentation. If you need help, check out our community forum or reach out to our support team.
The MongoDB CDC integration is now available as a public preview and is accessible to all users, including those on our free tier.
✅ The feature is stable enough for broader use but may still have limitations, known issues, or incomplete features.
✅ It is free to use during the public preview, though this may change with general availability (GA).
✅ While suitable for many use cases, it is not yet recommended for mission-critical workloads.
✅ Public preview features are not covered by SLAs or support terms.
We are already working on further improvements, including:
Performance optimizations to enhance throughput and efficiency.
A more flexible column and type mapping system to simplify data transformation and improve usability.
We encourage users to try it out and provide feedback to help shape the final release. If you encounter issues or have suggestions, please share them via our community forum.