Announcing DirectQuery Support for the MongoDB Atlas Connector for Power BI

Last year, we introduced the MongoDB Atlas Power BI Connector, a certified solution that has transformed how businesses gain real-time insights from their MongoDB Atlas data using their familiar Microsoft Power BI interface. Today, we’re excited to announce a significant enhancement to this integration: the introduction of DirectQuery support.

DirectQuery mode provides a direct connection to your MongoDB Atlas database, allowing Power BI to query data in real-time. This means that your Power BI visualizations and reports will always reflect the latest data without importing and storing data within Power BI. This is especially beneficial for analyzing large datasets where up-to-date information is crucial, ensuring decisions are made efficiently without losing performance due to repetitive data imports and storage complexities.

How DirectQuery in MongoDB Atlas Power BI Connector works:

  • The Power BI Connector is supported through MongoDB’s Atlas SQL Interface, which is easily enabled from the Atlas console. Atlas SQL, powered by Atlas Data Federation, allows you to integrate data across sources and apply transformations directly, enhancing your analytics.

  • Once enabled, you’ll receive a SQL Endpoint or URL to input into your MongoDB Atlas SQL Connection Dialog within Power BI Desktop. Here, you can choose between two connectivity modes: Import or DirectQuery.

  • Once connected through DirectQuery, Query folding takes place with Power Query, which is how data retrieval and transformation of source data is optimized. You can also achieve data transformation using a SQL Statement, either with the SQL Statement option in the Atlas SQL Interface or within the M Code script accessed via the Power Query Advanced Editor.

  • After your data is transformed and ready for analysis, start building reports with your Atlas data within the Power BI Desktop! Then, simply save, publish, and distribute within the Power BI online app, which is now part of the Microsoft Fabric platform.

Watch our comprehensive tutorial below covering how to connect your Atlas data to Power BI, control SQL schemas in Atlas, and use DirectQuery to gain real-time access to your data for business insights.

Power BI Connector for MongoDB Atlas is a Microsoft-certified solution. It not only supports the advanced capabilities of DirectQuery but also continues to offer Import Mode for scenarios where data volume is manageable and detailed data modeling is preferred. Whether you’re analyzing real-time data streams or creating comprehensive reports, the Atlas Power BI Connector adapts to your needs, ensuring your business leverages the full power of MongoDB Atlas.

DirectQuery Support is available now and can be accessed by updating your existing MongoDB Atlas Power BI Connector or downloading it here. Start transforming your data analysis and making more informed decisions with real-time Atlas data.

Log in and activate the Atlas SQL Interface to try out the Atlas Power BI Connector! If you are new to Atlas or Power BI, get started for free today on Azure Marketplace or Power BI Desktop.

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The Developers' Developers: Two Australian Developers Share Their Connections to Customers

The world’s 28 million software developers are writing the foundations of our future, propelling innovation for their organizations through lines of code by creating game-changing new apps. Indeed, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that between 2022 and 2032, the number of software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers will grow 24%, “much faster than the average for all occupations.” Fueling this innovative workforce is another group of developers, the people working behind the scenes to build the tools, technologies and platforms that other developers need to be successful: the developers’ developers. Many developers at MongoDB—which after all was built by developers for developers, and is beloved by enterprises and startups alike—fall into this camp. To learn more about what makes these developers tick, we talked with two Australia-based senior software engineers at MongoDB who love to code for their peers. For Lavender Chan and Angus Lee, there’s nothing like seeing the ripple effect of the code they have been working on and the impact it has on their customers. What’s more, the opportunity to be a “developer’s developer” has allowed Chan and Lee to find a space for deep technical work while thriving in an autonomous environment. At MongoDB, we believe developers will build the future. First, can you share more about your roles and what you’re working on? Lavender Chan (LC): I work on the Relational Migrator tool, which allows developers to migrate SQL data onto MongoDB. I joined the company two and a half years ago, and have been part of the Sydney technology scene for the last 10 years. The appeal of joining MongoDB was that it’s a large global company, but in the engineering team, you are able to have a big impact and a lot of autonomy. Relational Migrator was a greenfield project, and our team has been able to take the original product idea built out of the US and run with it. I’m a full stack developer and have touched on every feature of the tool. A lot of the engineers were able to contribute and work on new ideas. There’s also a strong emphasis on culture here which practically means a lot of the people I work with are excited to be here and passionate about their roles. Angus Lee (AL): I work in the MongoDB Charts team in Australia and think our team is a sweet spot for developers. I’ve interned for other tech companies and started my career at MongoDB. Since then I’ve been given responsibilities where I can create a lot of impact. My role at MongoDB in Sydney has also given me great opportunities to connect directly to the developers we are creating products for in a way that pushes my work to a higher level. Your roles are focused on products targeted to other developers. How does developing for developers affect your approach to your work? LC: In our roles we are creating directly for other developers, so the work that I am doing is deeply technical and specific. As Migrator is a newer product, we are able to interact directly with our customers—other developers—and often a lot of their questions are quite complex and specific, which means I go on a learning journey in debunking and fixing their problems. AL: We have a strong team culture in that as developers we want to be our own users. That means we want to use other MongoDB team products, and they use ours, so we can better identify pain points and issues for our customers. There’s a term that developers use called “dogfooding” that really sums up how we think on this, which basically means to use your own product. It means for me that I think about writing clean code to help any other developers extend on this, and how effective what I do will be for the user. What I’ve also learnt is how our product helps other products thrive. We should have done all the hard work to transform data and show it through data visualizsation tools so it’s easy for the customer. Can you tell us more about this connection to customers and how MongoDB empowers developers? LC: When Relational Migrator was released as a general product, I went to MongoDB World to work at the booth, and I talked to the developers and customers using the platform. As an engineer, it was an amazing experience and opportunity to see how it was being used and what else we could be doing. This connection of engineers with customers, as well as the ability to speak to them regularly in my role, is unique. In other companies I would need to go through support teams, to go through someone else just to push out a bug fix. Our team is very customer focused, so we can prioritizse features that our customers want. AL: One of the best moments for me at MongoDB was when I went to MongoDB World and I sat down with a customer to talk through a feature of Charts. It was a pivotal moment to see the improvements it makes for the businesses that use it, and the impact it generates for their customers beyond that. I could sit back and see the ripple effect of the code I’m writing. There is also a great feedback engine where our users can submit ideas and other users can vote for that feature. The product managers pick from these and push out features that are directly relevant to the developers using it. We really connect through our aim to create an open forum for developers and customers to provide feedback and suggest ideas. Developers are problem solvers. As part of the MongoDB Love Your Developers campaign, we believe in championing the voice of developers and giving them the freedom to experiment and innovate. How do you see this in action? LC: In other places, I was a small cog in a massive system. At MongoDB, I really have an impact and can see directly how my work translates to our final product. In Sydney, we’re a satellite office, but it’s indicative of our company culture that there is huge trust placed in these teams. We’re given high impact projects and can run with them, which means I’ve been able to watch the Relational Migrator product go from a tiny product used by only a few customers, to one that is now generally available. Not many engineers get to work for a well-established, large company and still have the opportunity to work on and release products like a startup. There is a strong global interest in AI-driven innovations. How have your connections to customers led to innovations in this area? AL: We’ve been able to take an idea for a new AI feature, Natural Language Charts , and take it from concept to being released as a feature at MongoDB.local in London. We could see from our conversations with customers, as well as broader industry trends, that there was strong interest in new AI features, so we were able to prioritize it for Charts. We started with nothing and were given the freedom to research how this feature could work using AI, create a new proof of concept, and from there we were able to push it out into a feature which was a really proud moment. Having this agility and flexibility to prioritize something new is exactly what we want to provide to our customers. I never feel like I'm just churning out code. We are connected to the work and to our customers. MongoDB is built by developers, for developers. Become part of the team changing the way the world works with data!

May 9, 2024
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MongoDB’s 2024 Year in Review

It’s hard to believe that another year is almost over! 2024 was a transformative year for MongoDB, and it was marked by both innovation and releases that further our commitment to empowering customers, developers, and partners worldwide. So without further ado, let’s dive into MongoDB’s 2024 highlights. We’ll also share our executive team’s predictions of what 2025 might have in store. A look back at 2024 MongoDB 8.0: The most performant version of MongoDB ever In October we released MongoDB 8.0 , the fastest, most resilient, secure, and reliable version of MongoDB yet. Architectural optimizations in MongoDB 8.0 have significantly improved the database’s performance, with 36% faster reads and 59% higher throughput for updates. Our new architecture also makes horizontal scaling cheaper and faster. Finally, working with encrypted data is easier than ever, thanks to the addition of range queries in Queryable Encryption (which allows customers to encrypt, store, and perform queries directly on data). Whether you’re a startup building your first app, or you’re a global enterprise managing mission-critical workloads, MongoDB 8.0 offers unmatched power and flexibility, solidifying MongoDB’s place as the world’s most popular document database. Learn more about what makes 8.0 the best version of MongoDB ever on the MongoDB 8.0 page . Delivering customer value with the MongoDB AI Applications Program AI applications have become a cornerstone of modern software, and MongoDB is committed to equipping customers with the technology, tools, and support they need to succeed on their AI journey. That’s why we launched the MongoDB AI Applications Program (MAAP) in 2024, a comprehensive program designed to accelerate the development of AI applications. By offering customers resources like access to AI specialists, an ecosystem of leading AI and tech companies, and AI architectural best practices supported by integrated services, MAAP helps solve customers’ most pressing business challenges, unlocks competitive advantages, and accelerates time to value for AI investments. Overall, MAAP’s aim is to set customers on the path to AI success. Visit the MongoDB AI Applications Program page or watch our session from AWS re:Invent to learn more! Advancing AI with MongoDB Atlas Vector Search In 2024, MongoDB further cemented its role in the AI space with enhancements to MongoDB Atlas Vector Search . Recognized in 2024 (for the second consecutive year!) as one of the most loved vector databases , MongoDB continues to provide a scalable, unified, and secure platform for building cutting-edge AI use cases. Recent advancements like vector quantization in Atlas Vector Search help deliver even more value to our customers, enabling them to scale applications to billions of vectors at a lower cost. Head over to our Atlas Vector Search quick start guide to get started with Atlas Vector Search today, or visit our AI resources hub to learn more about how MongoDB can power AI applications. Search Nodes: Performance at scale Search functionality is indispensable in modern applications, and with Atlas Search Nodes, organizations can now optimize their search workloads like never before. By providing dedicated infrastructure for Atlas Search and Vector Search workloads, Search Nodes ensure high performance (e.g., a 40–60% decrease in query times), scalability, and reliability, even for the most demanding use cases. As of this year , Search Nodes are generally available across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. This milestone underscores MongoDB’s commitment to delivering powerful solutions that scale alongside our customers’ needs. To learn more about Search Nodes, check out our documentation or watch our tutorial . Looking ahead: MongoDB’s 2025 predictions After the excitement of the past few years, 2025 will be defined by ensuring that technology investments deliver tangible value. Organizations remain excited about the potential AI and emerging technologies hold to solve real business challenges, but are increasingly focused on maintaining a return on investment. “Enterprises need to innovate faster than ever, but speed is no longer the only measure of success. Increasingly, organizations are laser-focused on ensuring that their technology investments directly address critical business challenges and provide clear ROI and competitive advantage—whether it’s optimizing supply chains, delivering hyper-personalized customer experiences, or scaling operations efficiently,” said Sahir Azam, Chief Product Officer at MongoDB. “In 2025, I expect to see organizations make significant strides in driving this innovation and efficiency by applying AI to more production use cases and by maturing the way they leverage their data to build compelling and differentiated customer experiences.” Indeed, we expect to see organizations make more strategic investments in emerging technologies like gen AI—innovating with a sharp focus on solving business challenges. “In 2025, we can expect the focus to shift from ‘what AI can do’ to ‘what AI should do,’ moving beyond the hype to a clearer understanding of where AI can provide real value and where human judgment is still irreplaceable,” said Tara Hernandez, VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB. “As we advance, I think we’ll see organizations begin to adopt more selective, careful applications of AI, particularly in areas where stakes are high, such as healthcare, finance, and public safety. A refined approach to AI development will be essential—not only for producing quality results but also to build trust, ensuring these tools genuinely support human goals rather than undermining them.” With more capable, accessible application development tools and customer-focused programs like MAAP at developers’ fingertips, 2025 is an opportunity to make a data-driven impact faster than ever before. "Right now, organizations have an opportunity to leverage their data to reimagine how they do business, to more effectively adapt to a changing world, and to revolutionize our quality of life,” said Andrew Davidson, SVP of Products at MongoDB. “By harnessing our latest technologies, developers can build a foundation for a transformative future." Head over to our updates page to learn more about the new releases and updates from MongoDB in 2024. Keep an eye on our events page to learn what's to come from MongoDB in 2025!

December 19, 2024