MongoDB Developer 10gen Changes Name To… MongoDB

10gen, the developer of open source NoSQL database MongoDB, has announced it is changing its company name to MongoDB, with immediate effect.

The name of the database and its community website will remain the same. However, the corporate website has already moved to www.mongodb.com.

The company is following in the footsteps of Blackberry (formerly Research In Motion) which changed its somewhat obscure name to that of its flagship product earlier this year.

What’s in a name

MongoDB (from ‘humongous’) is one of the leaders in the emerging NoSQL movement, which rejects the orthodox approach of relational databases. NoSQL databases are not built on tables, and tend not to use structured query language to manipulate data, which allows for more flexibility.

“In 2007, 10gen began work on an open-source cloud computing stack. That was the birth of MongoDB, as the data layer of that platform,” said Dwight Merriman, chairman and co-founder of 10gen. “When we saw the potential for the database we had built we decided to focus 100 percent on MongoDB. Thus the company name 10gen and the database name MongoDB were different. With this change, our goal is to get the names back into alignment.”

As part of the changes, 10gen Education project, which provides free online training as well as face-to-face courses, has been rebranded as MongoDB University.

Last month, the UK’s Met Office began using MongoDB to process huge amounts of data from outer space, turning it into useful space weather forecasts. And in August, eHarmony, a dating website that claims to process a billion potential matches daily, said that adopting MongoDB instead of a decentralised SQL database had helped it find matching couples around 95 percent quicker.

How well do you know open source software? Take our quiz!