MongoDB: How to represent a schema diagram in a thesis?

We found class diagrams to actually be one of the best ways to represent a mongo schema design.

It can capture most of the items that a document will have such as arrays, embedded objects and even references.

General guidelines we use to relate onto concepts to uml

Embed = Composition aggregation

Reference = Association class

If you're unfamiliar with the uml terminology then this is a decent intro.

UML intro from IBM site

There is a tool doing diagrams for MongoDb, is called DbSchema. It discovers the schema by scanning data from db. I would also suggest trying two features from them :

• virtual relations which allow exploring data from different collections in the same time. A kind of JOIN between different collections.
• HTML documentation, we use it in presentations as well - the comments are in mouse-over ( diarams are saved as vector images ).