Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#1

Post by macando » Fri, May 22, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

Haven't heard anything about it in a while. Do you still use it or stopped using it. Why?

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#2

Post by billconan » Fri, May 22, 2020, 10:30 AM UTC

yes. Because we scrape data from different websites, and they each has very a different content format. mongodb handles unstructured data well

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#3

Post by TomMarius » Fri, May 22, 2020, 10:35 AM UTC

billconan wrote: post #2

yes. Because we scrape data from different websites, and they each has very a different content format. mongodb handles unstructured data well

Have you compared with postgresql's jsonb?

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#4

Post by colinbartlett » Fri, May 22, 2020, 10:45 AM UTC

No. I only ever used it previously for things like logging unstructured API responses. Now I just shove that kind of stuff into PG JSONB.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#5

Post by gas9S9zw3P9c » Fri, May 22, 2020, 10:55 AM UTC

I use postgres for pretty much everything these days, sometimes with Hasura if I need GraphQL.

There was a short period of time (1-2 years or so?) where I did my projects with Mongo, but right now I don't see what it can offer over something extremely stable like postgres, which also handles JSON amazingly well.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#6

Post by stavros » Fri, May 22, 2020, 10:59 AM UTC

No, I had a sour experience in 2009 where it ate my data, the devs were rather cavalier with "there's a warning on the download page" (I got it through apt), it ate my data again when the OOM killer killed its process.

I didn't like the project attitude of a database being so lax with persistence, so I never used it again.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#7

Post by pschlump » Fri, May 22, 2020, 11:03 AM UTC

No - Postgres is faster and it has JSONB. (It also has tables and SQL and GIS and ...)

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#8

Post by adityapatadia » Fri, May 22, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

We use it extensively. Basically the low overhead and almost no maintenance requirement of startup world is nicely satisfied by Mongo.

In our last 3 years of usage, we never faced any issues from DB. It's improved a lot in last 2-3 years and I can say it's rock solid right now.

I am basically finding no reason to switch to any other DB.

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#9

Post by ochronus » Fri, May 22, 2020, 11:04 AM UTC

I've heard it's webscale! ;)

Re: Ask HN: Do you still use MongoDB?

#10

Post by jondubois » Fri, May 22, 2020, 11:06 AM UTC

MongoDB is a pretty good database IMO. I've used it at several companies in the past and wouldn't mind using it again.

My favorite DB is RethinkDB. It's a shame that the company behind it fizzled out and was absorbed by Stripe. I still cannot wrap my mind around why it's not more popular. It's similar to MongoDB but much better. It's the perfect database. It adds constraints which improve the quality of your code. Also RethinkDB scales very well and the control panel that comes with it is mind-bendingly powerful, I'm not kidding; you can click a button to shard or replicate a table over multiple hosts! WTF! I can't say the same about Postgres unfortunately. There is nothing truly remarkable about it.

I use Postgres for one of my projects today but purely because of compatibility reasons with an existing system. I don't understand what all the hype is with Postgres.