MEAN is a development stack for building and hosting web applications.
MEAN is an acronym for its component parts MongoDB, Express, AngularJS and Node.js.
The main reason you might consider MEAN is if you're familiar with JavaScript here
are some other reasons you might want to choose MEAN or
choose a different development stack for your next web application.
All of the components of the MEAN stack are reliable,
well understood and open source, but so are many other development stacks.
Here are some reasons you might choose MEAN over other development stacks.
You should choose MEAN if your data isn't highly structured.
MongoDB is what's called a NoSQL database and
NoSQL database doesn't require data to be structured in a predefined
way as it would with a relational database like Microsoft SQL server or my SQL.
Instead, MongoDB stores its data in JSON-like documents that don't require
the rigid data structures that my sequel or other relational databases require.
Also MEAN is well documented.
The components of the MEAN stack are all popular right now.
Resources for working with MongoDB, Express, AngularJS and
Node.js are easy to find and finally MEAN runs almost anywhere.
You can also develop mean stack applications from your favorite
development environment, whether that's Windows, macOS or Linux.
Here are some reasons you might want to choose a development stack other than
MEAN, even if you decide that MEAN is not right for you,
you might still be interested in this module.
Many of the patterns you'll see apply to other kinds of web application frameworks.
If your data is highly structured, you might benefit from putting your data in
a relational database such as Microsoft SQL server or MySQL.
If you prefer another language over JavaScript, there may be an alternative
framework out there for you, for example, the lamp stack,
which consists of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, sometimes with PERL or
python instead of PHP, might better align to your strengths and experience.