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Poll: What database does your company use?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What database does your company use?

#281

Post by espeed »

jamwt wrote: post #274
bretthoerner wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was your experience with Cassandra different? Happy at server 10 and 100, that is?

TBH, we didn't seriously pursue Cassandra when we considered distributed database systems b/c the vast majority of "back-reference checks" we did on the YC network and other area startups was "stay away." We got some very frank advice from some people whose opinions on databases I take very seriously to stay away, including reports from within FB. Having said that, I cannot claim to have firsthand proven or disproven…

Quora's decisions to not use Cassandra and Adam's answer regarding it lead me to the same conclusion (http://www.quora.com/Quora-Infrastructure/Why-does-Quora-use...). Evidently few from Facebook are advocating it.

Re: Poll: What database does your company use?

#286

Post by poissonpie »

blntechie wrote: post #153
s00pcan wrote: post #90

SQL Server unfortunately. I was reminded why I hate it today when I was trying to set up a simple remote connection to the instance running on my new Windows 7 machine. TCP/IP enabled, IPv4 addresses activated and enabled, remote connections enabled, firewall disabled (for now), and it still didn't work! I tried introducing MySQL over a year ago only to have some hilarious emails with a senior programmer about how we…

I've never worked much with other databases other than SQL Server. But one time I had to work with Oracle and MySQL, I had trouble getting a good enough client (like SQL Server Management Studio) even though I was ready to pay. May be it's my personal preference, I tried many clients (TOAD, DBArtisan, SQL Developer, SQL Plus etc.) and found that none was as polished (not that i'm mentioning functional) and integrates…

The SQL Server Management tool is pretty good. And to be honest, I've actually never had a problem using SQL Server. It's been a solid, dependable database on any number of applications for me over the years. Granted, the businesses have been less on the startup side and more on the larger older organisation side of things.

Re: Poll: What database does your company use?

#287

Post by ericflo »

jamwt wrote: post #274
bretthoerner wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was your experience with Cassandra different? Happy at server 10 and 100, that is?

TBH, we didn't seriously pursue Cassandra when we considered distributed database systems b/c the vast majority of "back-reference checks" we did on the YC network and other area startups was "stay away." We got some very frank advice from some people whose opinions on databases I take very seriously to stay away, including reports from within FB. Having said that, I cannot claim to have firsthand proven or disproven…

Facebook for a long time didn't use the vastly (and I mean vastly) improved open source version of Cassandra, instead opting for their internal fork. Instead of choosing to do so, I believe they have now switched to HBase, mainly for its easier consistency model. So I would take their advice with a grain of salt, because it's probably based on their experiences with an old fork.

There are a few people (YC companies even, alas) who are very vocally negative about Cassandra, but I also saw some of those same people ignoring direct advice given to them in #cassandra on IRC, and then turning around and bashing it when it didn't work as planned. Simply following the advice could have made for a completely different story.

I suppose the lesson to learn is that you need to develop software in a way that simply won't allow developers to shoot themselves in the foot, because people never want to blame themselves for doing it, they blame the gun.

Re: Poll: What database does your company use?

#288

Post by patrickaljord »

kahawe wrote: post #183
patrickaljord wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a younger/smaller companies, I wouldn't use Oracle/DB2 even if it was free. Happy mongodb user here.

As someone who has worked in young, small and medium, old and larger companies: I wouldn't use mongo/couch outside of non-critical webapps even if I was paid to do so and for my own (cynic) understanding, it is as much a "database" as a folder with clear text files is. Yes, Oracle is big, bad and "ebil" and I cannot stand their sales drones.. but if you ever had an "oh CRAP" moment, chances are very good that the db…

Adsense runs on mysql, how non-critical is that?

Re: Poll: What database does your company use?

#289

Post by patrickaljord »

kahawe wrote: post #183
patrickaljord wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a younger/smaller companies, I wouldn't use Oracle/DB2 even if it was free. Happy mongodb user here.

As someone who has worked in young, small and medium, old and larger companies: I wouldn't use mongo/couch outside of non-critical webapps even if I was paid to do so and for my own (cynic) understanding, it is as much a "database" as a folder with clear text files is. Yes, Oracle is big, bad and "ebil" and I cannot stand their sales drones.. but if you ever had an "oh CRAP" moment, chances are very good that the db…

Adsense runs on mysql, how non-critical is that?

Re: Poll: What database does your company use?

#290

Post by ern »

sixtypoundhound wrote: post #268
Someone wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not surprise me if MS Access were used at more companies than MS SQL Server. I'll leave it to you whether you call it a database :-)

Hah! Don't discount it that quickly - MS Access can be surprisingly useful, particularly for RAD work at a large company where you need to push stuff out to a bunch of MS Office users. I've delivered a bunch of "light" Access/VBA applications to support business initiatives (cranked out in under a week or two) which probably account for over 80% of the value created by my hands on technical work (several of which pro…

Lightswitch ( http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/lightswitch ) also seems to be aimed at the sort of thing you describe. RAD, but providing a solid MS architecture in the background. Have you looked at it yet?
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