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by vacri 3425 days ago
As a sysadmin, I got tired of the devs constantly ragging on Mongodb (the same folks that selected it before I was hired). I eventually got fed up and said: "why do we use it if you all hate it so much. Let's replace it. What do you want to use instead, it's easy for me to set up something new". Cue everyone going "ah, it's not so bad, really..."

MongoDB is the Nickelback of databases: a reasonable act that's not going to blow your socks off, but one where saying "OMG I hate it!" somehow signals membership to some cool clique of connoisseurs.
3 comments
jgord 3425 days ago
alternative anecdota : I rewrote a backend that was using mongo, moved it to postgresql+postgis. Solved an ever-expanding RAM issue and is still blindingly fast [ on SSD hosting ]

The main win was not server stability, it was having general tools to manage data .. including the inbuilt geo-algorithms that come with postGIS. eg. I could make our data set 9x smaller by smoothing map paths.

I still love the Mongo api, but I just cant risk it with data on projects that people are paying for, or that I need to support.

[ I think the real sweet spot will be deep integration of javascript and json into postgres - so I can write stored procs in js, get db events in js, wrangle json fluidly.. all of which is improving. ]

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vacri 3425 days ago
One day postgres will be everywhere :)
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ralfn 3425 days ago
CouchDB, RethinkDB, PostgreSQL.

>OMG I hate it!" somehow signals membership to some cool clique of connoisseurs

You do realize you are the one dragging identity into the mix.

I dont understand how this is a big ego debate. MongoDB isnt that relevant and it isnt Nickelback, its a homeopathetic database. That is: if you use it for something else than caching (store data you cant afford to loose, or load balance and use the database as main mutex to deal with all concurrency issues) that would arguably be a very irresponsible choice.

Hell i hate most databases, because its hard to get right yet some have interesting trade-offs (ElasticSearch, Cassandra, CockroachDB).

And its not a subjective or even analog discussion where databases are more or less consistent or more or less durable. They fsync or they dont. They use raft with majority consensus or they dont.

If you as a sysadmin judge these emperical facts based on your prejudices about the sort of people that would agree or disagree with you than you are much more like the cool clique of connoisseurs than the people at the other end of your finger.

Its engineering, not wine tasting. The shape of the world isnt a subjective thing anymore than the durability of a database that doesnt fsync.

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x0x0 3425 days ago
Well, I'm a member of the MongoDB is worth quitting over club. I replaced it at a former employer with postgres. Eng waved bye to an endless stream of operational issues, and customers saw better uptimes and much much faster responses.
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navalsaini 3425 days ago
When was that and which version of mongodb? Do you suppose things have improved after 3.0 etc.
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