TrustRadius Insights for MarkLogic Server are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
MarkLogic is a versatile software used by various industries to implement solutions for their clients. It is utilized in publishing workflows, enterprise search, big data analytics, and the semantic web. Users have praised its powerful geospatial search feature, which efficiently searches locations based on latitude and longitude. MarkLogic's indexing and tokenization techniques contribute to the quick execution of search queries.
Healthcare organizations rely on MarkLogic as a backend store for patient records, enabling storage, retrieval, and updates. By using a micro-services approach with patient matching and search functionality, MarkLogic helps keep patients up-to-date across multiple hospitals. It also serves as a central store for companies dealing with large amounts of data across multiple clusters, providing efficient storage and search capabilities.
In the academic publishing field, MarkLogic is extensively used for end-to-end data flow, including metadata and full-text content. Its newer features like semantics and JavaScript support are leveraged to develop cutting-edge technology.
MarkLogic's multi-model approach, scalability, and exceptional performance in handling XML data make it a preferred choice. It is also employed for reporting purposes with potential for future OLTP and OLAP services. Companies utilize MarkLogic to create DataHubs that consolidate data from various sources, enabling business teams to leverage the data with BI tools.
The technology department at Zynx Health relies on MarkLogic as the primary database layer for clinical decision support analytics. MarkLogic's XML-based solution proves valuable in handling hierarchically structured and semi-structured healthcare data.
MarkLogic is an enterprise NoSQL database server which has multi-model approach, is highly scalable and with exceptional performance. We identified MarkLogic as the best fit because they can load all the data in XML format through different silos and as MarkLogic provides real time services through its RESTful services it can be used as both OLTP and OLAP servers. As of now it is being used only for reporting purposes. We are creating DataHub for our client's various applications serving different portfolios which connect to multiple isolated data silos. Our objective is to bring all that data to DataHub and to create DataMart process for the business team to make use of this data using BI tools. We are using the MarkLogic DataHub Framework which creates documents in a specific envelope pattern. This framework will have set of plugins inside which our code and configurations files will be present.
Pros
MarkLogic is highly scalable and with exceptional performance.
Marklogic provides real time services through its RESTful services it can be used as both OLTP and OLAP servers.
MarkLogic is identified as the best fit because they can load all the data in XML format through different silos.
Cons
How to do complete data profiling on documents loaded in Marklogic database?
Customers need a tools which can be customized to suit their data profiling needs but currently the tools which MarkLogic provides fall short on this requirement.
Unit testing framework which is using only XQuery as the language is lacking some features.
Likelihood to Recommend
MarkLogic is very well suited for all XML and JSON files to get loaded and to derive insights from those huge data sets. It is less appropriate when the number of files is directly proportional to run the query, which should be taken into consideration.
The technology department at Zynx Health uses MarkLogic as the primary database layer supporting an innovative analytics product for clinical decision support. We had concluded that we wanted an XML-based solution for hierarchically structured and semi-structured data, in part because of the ubiquity of XML-based formats in the healthcare space, but we also wanted enterprise-grade integrity and scaling features, so we decided on MarkLogic.
Pros
MarkLogic's implementation of the XQuery language is fast and versatile, and the additional language features and numerous libraries that they provide out-of-the-box really make it feel like a "batteries included" language, at least within the context of XML and JSON database management.
Despite its enterprise focus, MarkLogic is a very developer-friendly product. All of its administrative features, including provisioning servers, are available through APIs. Most of the functionality one uses from XQuery come in the form of source-included XQuery libraries. I am strongly inclined, generally, to favor open-source solutions, so the focus on freedom and capability for the developer was important to me in this proprietary platform.
MarkLogic is fast. It's much faster than the other XML-based database engines we looked at, and is certainly faster than XML layers bolted on top of relational database engines. The lockless write strategy is great architecture, and it enables the engine to smoothly scale up simultaneous reads and writes. MarkLogic's speed enabled us to perform significant updates on database structure and content as part of our continuous deployment strategy with minimal impact on stability and availability.
Cons
XQuery is a tough language for engineering teams to adopt; it's the world's weirdest pure functional programming language. Once you've crossed over and can see The Matrix, it's clear that the language design is aligned perfectly with the XML querying problem domain, and the fact that it's a Turing-complete programming language rather than just a query domain-specific language (like SQL) enables you to go wherever you need to go with it, which is empowering. But there are areas of obscurity and seeming inconsistency between MarkLogic's lockless write strategy, transaction management and XQuery semantics that all of our developers, at one time or another, ran into, and we only mastered these features after many months with the product and with the help of an expert consultant. It turns out that much of what we learned appears in the copious documentation, but the documentation is SO copious (and, in the area of transaction management, so dense) that none of us had the time to read all of it. This is an area of the product that the documentation should elevate and present, front and center, in a way that is more prescriptive, rather than just descriptive. Give examples showing how developers should solve real problems, and illustrate what the engine is doing.
MarkLogic's pricing, like its feature set, is enterprise-scale. One understands; they're like the Oracle of NoSQL. But the storage restriction on their "free" version basically means that the only way in is full retail, so there are wide categories of companies that would never consider adopting. I wonder if any kind of tiered model might be sustainable for them.
MarkLogic support was quite reasonable in their response time and their general knowledge of the product, but there were certain insights to problems that we really only gained by working with a very knowledgeable consultant that the company recommended for us.
Likelihood to Recommend
If you're looking at MarkLogic because you need an enterprise-grade XML-based database (not just any document store, but specifically XML-based), then the choice is easy. If your needs are more general, and you're looking at MarkLogic as an "enterprise NoSQL" solution, then you should look carefully at the feature set, your current and anticipated needs, and what your options are for achieving "enterprise" goals with other solutions (and engineering investments of your own, including DevOps work).
If MarkLogic still looks good after such analysis, consider whether your team is ready for the investment. Is the team small enough and/or eager enough to buy in, intellectually, to an "exotic" platform like MarkLogic? Can they leave behind the relational mindset and take the time to deeply understand and become productive with XML and the XML ecosystem (e.g., XQuery, XSLT)?
MarkLogic is used the most by the academic publishing unit. There it is used for an end to end data flow for the metadata and full text of our academic publishing products (PsycINFO database, Peer reviewed journals, Books, Psychological Tests and Measures). In addition, we use some of the newer capabilities, such as semantics and javascript support, for our "labs" where we develop cutting edge technology for our content.
Pros
Indexing is a major strength of MarkLogic. The out-of-the-box configuration is set up to handle a combination of text and fielded data. The indexing is also highly configurable. Those configuration options are at the heart of a lot of our high-volume, high-performance applications.
The industrial strength transactions and security are also a strength, particularly when we are dealing with user-created intellectual property.
The engineering support is a strength. They are big enough to have a really strong support and engineering staff, but small enough so that a medium-sized customer has access to it. They are very responsive to questions and problem reports.
The ability to move easily among XML and JSON is a strength.
Cons
There is a steep learning curve to learn to use this tool, particularly the xquery and extensive associated API. The more recent releases and features have been responsive to this concern, but some of the core features still take some learning.
The javascript implementation is new and there are still some spots where it needs to be made fully compliant with standards and conventions, such as file extensions
Likelihood to Recommend
We first purchased MarkLogic licenses in 2008, when we were a publisher with lots of XML and they were an XML database. That was a pretty clear fit. Since then, they have moved into the mainstream of NoSQL and so have we. I think they would be a good fit for anyone that has NoSQL needs that also require industrial strength transaction safety, ability to scale, and that sort of feature. They are commercial, not open source, so if someone is committed to the whole stack being open source, then this is not a good fit.
