3 min readUpdated Dec 13, 2024

Ably LiveSync: Keep devices in sync with the state of your MongoDB database

Ably LiveSync: Keep devices in sync with the state of your MongoDB database
Faye McClenahanFaye McClenahan

Following the deprecation of Realm, we have partnered with MongoDB to ensure that MongoDB customers can continue to deliver the device sync capabilities their customers depend on. The solution: a MongoDB Connector for the Ably LiveSync product.

Ably LiveSync enables you to seamlessly fan-out your MongoDB Atlas state to billions of clients in realtime - ensuring reliable, low-latency delivery of your document data. Integrating seamlessly into your tech stack, LiveSync handles the complexities of reconnections and data integrity. No additional charges above standard platform use. No need for a local database to manage.

Key benefits of Ably LiveSync

Limitless fan-out: Powered by the Ably platform, LiveSync is built to perform at scale. Broadcast updates from one to millions of clients, in milliseconds and handle trillions of operations each month.

Keeping things simple: We're not trying to be a local database. If local first isn’t a requirement, you can avoid the complexities of building a local first application. LiveSync and the MongoDB connector seamlessly integrate into your application stack to enable quick development times.

Connection state recovery: Ably Pub/Sub’s connection state recovery ensures that any failed connections are re-established with any missed messages replayed to maintain a synchronized state.

Data integrity guarantees: As changes happen in the MongoDB, Ably guarantees that all updates are delivered in the right order, exactly once. LiveSync lets you update your database state and publish to Ably, transactionally.

Low cost device synchronization: We only charge for messages, connections and channels with a simple consumption-based pricing model, billed per minute. There are no additional costs to then use LiveSync or the MongoDB connector.

Integrating LiveSync with your MongoDB-based application

To aid developer velocity, developers can take advantage of Ably’s pre-built and managed MongoDB database connector, which is enabled through an Ably integration rule. The rule will consume document changes from your MongoDB deployment via the MongoDB Change Streams API.

The integration rule exists as a “database connector” component that is entirely provisioned and managed by Ably and is fault-tolerant with automatic fail-over.
When a change event is received over the Change Streams API it is published to an Ably channel. When you configure the integration rule, you can specify how change events are mapped to individual Ably channels. Clients can then subscribe to database changes by subscribing to Ably channels.

Device synchronization powered by Ably’s proven realtime platform

LiveSync is powered by Ably’s proven realtime experiences platform. Built to serve the world’s most demanding realtime workloads, providing 5+ years of 100% uptime. Additionally, Ably's globally distributed architecture caches messages near connected clients, ensuring data reaches them with ultra-low latency, regardless of their location. This setup provides a seamless, high-performance experience, especially for applications with a global user base.

By leveraging Ably Pub/Sub, the MongoDB database connector enables customers to benefit from features like connection-recovery, exactly-once delivery, and ordering guarantees out of the box.

Get started with LiveSync + MongoDB

Sign-up for a free account and dive into our docs to give LiveSync a try. If you are interested in being a beta tester for the MongoDB connector, please get in touch - we’d love to collaborate!

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