JSON, Angular JS and MarkLogic

For years MarkLogic was known as an XML repository — so its not surprising that folks don’t think of the Enterprise NoSQL database as natively handling JSON. But handle JSON it does — and very well.

In fact my colleague Dave Cassel just put together a list of JavaScript tools that will help you jumpstart development. If you are primarily using JavaScript than JSON is a very natural fit. “If you are working with a REST API, which I do with most of my apps, having XML come back is harder to work with,” he explained. “So I wanted to see if I would be giving anything up by storing strictly in JSON.”

One of the reasons why people like working with JavaScript, JSON and jQuery so much is their ease and comparative lack of structure (versus XML).  That lack of structure has drawbacks though. “JQuery is hard to test and doesn’t give any structure to my code,” he told me. Dave is in charge of MarkLogic’s Vanguard Team — which develops best practices, demos and applications that can be used by the rest of the company. He put together a list of tools he has found that jives with MarkLogic’s ability to store and work with JSON. His go-to is AngularJS.

The team has been using Angular for a couple months and so far, thumbs up. “Right off the top of my head I can tell you it’s easier to build reusable components and easier to write unit tests,” he said. He did admit that some find Angular has a bit of a learning curve — as it does have a structure to it. “But that doesn’t take very long to do and it is really powerful,” he added.

Btw, the app that he is building to test his toolset is a decision-support system for sales engineers to choose and find the most relevant sales demos. The source code for that effort is listed on GitHub.