Just a quick note: There is a feature planned called "virtual collections" for querying the embedded collection as if it were a standalone collection. That way

Just a quick note: There is a feature planned called "virtual collections" for querying the embedded collection as if it were a standalone collection. That way you could easily do db.posts.$comments.find({"name": username}) to retrieve all posts by a user, or db.posts.$comments.find().sort({date:-1}).limit(10) to retrieve the latest 10 comments on the blog. Link to the feature in MongoDB's issue tracker: https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-142 https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-142