have users of foursquare run into problems? were they serious? did someone lose money? let's ask. it would answer whether to use an eventually consistent db.
Of course we've run into problems from time to time. No one goes from nothing to foursquare's level of success without running into some bumps along the way.
> were they serious? did someone lose money?
No.
> it would answer whether to use an eventually consistent db
MongoDB actually isn't really an eventually consistent datastore. It doesn't (for example) allow writes to multiple nodes across a network partition and then have a mechanism for resolving conflicts.
Kudos for not blaming the tool when that would have been the easiest route. It's worth mentioning that 10gen has MongoDB Monitoring Service out now. It makes monitoring MongoDB instances a lot more accessible and convenient.
That's not how everyone remembered it at the time, nor the picture the blog painted. And the mongo monitoring thing is much newer, right? Its like saying that a fire wasn't a big deal because next time there'll be a fire station.
If you don't have paying customers (Foursquare), you're not going to lose much in hard dollars when your service falls over. Reputation points? Sure. Dollars, not so much.
Drawing a line between the difference in losing money for a paying service and a free service, while technically correct, is not the best business practice. Any online business looses money by being down, whether they can easily quantify it or not.
Of course we've run into problems from time to time. No one goes from nothing to foursquare's level of success without running into some bumps along the way.
> were they serious? did someone lose money?
No.
> it would answer whether to use an eventually consistent db
MongoDB actually isn't really an eventually consistent datastore. It doesn't (for example) allow writes to multiple nodes across a network partition and then have a mechanism for resolving conflicts.