MongoDB relationships: embed or reference?

Question

I\'m new to MongoDB--coming from a relational database background. I want to design a question structure with some comments, but I don\'t know which relationship to use for

Answer 1

Actually, I'm quite curious why nobody spoke about the UML specifications. A rule of thumb is that if you have an aggregation, then you should use references. But if it is a composition, then the coupling is stronger, and you should use embedded documents.

And you will quickly understand why it is logical. If an object can exist independently of the parent, then you will want to access it even if the parent doesn't exist. As you just can't embed it in a non-existing parent, you have to make it live in it's own data structure. And if a parent exist, just link them together by adding a ref of the object in the parent.

Don't really know what is the difference between the two relationships ? Here is a link explaining them: Aggregation vs Composition in UML