MongoDB as DBMS in an ERP Application

Abstract

Enterprise Resource Planning systems (ERP) have been an integral part of organizations for several decades. With their rich functionality, they support a wide range of business processes. For many companies, ERP software has been the starting point for digitalization. With a global market of USD 38 billion, ERP systems still enjoy great popularity today and have increasingly attracted small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) customers. However, legacy ERP systems have difficulty coping with the demands of digital business and fast changing environments. Much of the ERP system architecture uses technologies that are 30 to 40 years old.NoSQL database management systems, such as MongoDB, are associated with greater flexibility and better performance than relational databases. There is little evidence in literature of applying NoSQL technology in ERP systems as NoSQL use cases are predominantly found in Big Data applications. This work contributes to an innovation project developing a novel ERP business solution by examining whether it is possible to use MongoDB as DBMS in an ERP application. To this end, a common ERP business process, billing, was selected as a business case on which to build a prototype examining the database support offered by MongoDB. A prototype business solution was implemented, tested and evaluated to show how suitable MongoDB is in this business scenario....