I am somewhat confused about when to use group(), aggregate with $group or mapreduce. I read the documentation at http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Aggregation for group(), http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/reference/aggregation/group/#_S_group for $group.. Is sharding the only situation where group() won't work? Also, I get this feeling that $group is more powerful than group() because it can be used in conjunction with other pipeline operators from aggregation framework.. How does $group compare with mapreduce? I read somewhere that it doesn't generate any temporary collection whereas mapreduce does. Is that so?
Can someone present an illustration or guide me to a link where these three concepts are explained together, taking the same sample data, so I can compare them easily?
EDIT:
Also, it would be great if you can point out anything new specifically in these commands since the new 2.2 release came out..