How do large documents complicate pagination in MongoDB?

In the context of pagination in MongoDB, large documents can complicate the process because they often contain a significant amount of data that may not be relevant to the specific query or use case. Pagination relies on fetching smaller, manageable chunks of data to present to the user, typically involving the retrieval of specific fields or subsets of information.

When dealing with large documents, it becomes challenging to filter out just the relevant values. Instead of easily extracting or displaying only the necessary information, you may end up retrieving the entire document. This is less efficient and can lead to slow performance, especially if many documents are being processed and displayed at once. It can also mean that parts of the document that are not needed for the current pagination view are being considered, leading to resource wastage.

Due to this, pagination strategies often need to adapt for collections that include large documents, potentially complicating both the development and performance aspects of data handling in MongoDB. Consequently, being forced to work with less-than-ideal filtering impacts how efficiently the data can be paginated and displayed.