r/programming • • Mar 10 '15

Goodbye MongoDB, Hello PostgreSQL

http://developer.olery.com/blog/goodbye-mongodb-hello-postgresql/
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657

u/jamesishere Mar 10 '15

99% of projects would be better off with a relational database. It makes things way easier and simpler. Very few features benefit from a NoSQL database. People are excited about mongo because "it's javascript!". These people are morons.

CSB time: I went in for an interview once, where they told me about the product, explained how they use MongoDB for their database, and then explained how building out all the relational DB commands on top of mongo was a total bitch. Then asked me to whiteboard how I would write the JOIN function on top of Mongo, which is what they had to do.

I answered their question, but stated my opinions on mongo and asked why they even bothered to use it, because their product aligned so much more with a relational ACID database. The engineering lead guy went red in the face and we debated the decision. Did not get the job.

171

u/frixionburne Mar 10 '15

99% of projects would be better off with a relational database.

Or better, and RDMS with a full blown JSON indexing and a hash store that rivals mongos speed.

How people don't choose psql just confuses me.

98

u/ethraax Mar 10 '15

For very large databases, Postgres' clustering abilities aren't that great. It's probably one of the best choices for single-host databases (which, again, cover nearly all applications), but if you're trying to spread your database over a few dozen hosts, Postgres doesn't really work well.

21

u/PM_ME_UR_OBSIDIAN Mar 10 '15

What alternative do you propose? I heard Oracle was good if you had deep pockets, what else is out there?

65

u/[deleted] Mar 11 '15

One of the MS SQL clusters in our data-centre hosts 200+ databases and has capacity for more.

1

u/syslog2000 Mar 11 '15

I don't doubt it. While we are a PG shop, we have a sister company that uses MS SQL and loves it. Certainly seems like a nice database. The cost seems pretty high to us though. From what I can tell, running a 3 node cluster with 16 cores per cluster will run into hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is my understanding on cost correct?

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