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The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

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Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#11

Post by phonon »

basil-rash wrote: post #9
smt88 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They grew 30% if you look at revenue, but that's not how people determine whether a business is healthy. EBITDA is a better metric, and that number was getting dramatically worse every year until 2023. But even in 2023, EBITDA was -$202M. I don't see it ever approaching $0. So it's still a shit business on top of a shit product that no one ever really needed.

Why do you choose EBITDA? Last I heard it was utter nonsense”, at least according to Warren Buffet. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnKylAyLbQ

Their "Comprehensive Losses" for the last 3 years are (in thousands)

(171,150)

(343,375)

(309,090)

So there you go...

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#12

Post by roenxi »

basil-rash wrote: post #9
smt88 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They grew 30% if you look at revenue, but that's not how people determine whether a business is healthy. EBITDA is a better metric, and that number was getting dramatically worse every year until 2023. But even in 2023, EBITDA was -$202M. I don't see it ever approaching $0. So it's still a shit business on top of a shit product that no one ever really needed.

Why do you choose EBITDA? Last I heard it was utter nonsense”, at least according to Warren Buffet. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnKylAyLbQ

You'd probably save time if you directly suggest what income metric you want to use. In the video, Buffet is basically saying he cares about income after interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. In other words, that he cares about actual income. That'd be very on-brand for Buffet.

That measure won't be good for MongoDB Inc. either; they've been millions in the red for years. Losing $100 million in a year would be the best result they've achieved in a while now.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#13

Post by jpgvm »

basil-rash wrote: post #9
smt88 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They grew 30% if you look at revenue, but that's not how people determine whether a business is healthy. EBITDA is a better metric, and that number was getting dramatically worse every year until 2023. But even in 2023, EBITDA was -$202M. I don't see it ever approaching $0. So it's still a shit business on top of a shit product that no one ever really needed.

Why do you choose EBITDA? Last I heard it was utter nonsense”, at least according to Warren Buffet. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tvnKylAyLbQ

Buffets point is that it can be gamed to look good. In this case even if they are gaming it to look better than it is.... well it's still awful.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#14

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

p-e-w wrote: post #2

At some point during the past 10 years or so, the world realized that document databases are actually a bad idea, and relational databases can do the same job better with just a few easy-to-implement QoL improvements (such as JSON operators in SQL). Meanwhile MongoDB's creators thought this was a great time to make Mongo non-free software, presumably with the goal of making a quick buck from cloud operators. The resu…

I‘m not sure that is the case. What I‘m seeing is that people use the cloud-native document stores such as DynamoDB instead of Mongo. The only thing zoomers hate more than traditional SQL databases is XML.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#15

Post by winrid »

paulmd wrote: post #7

In this world you either evolve to Elastic/Cassandra/etc or return to Postgres :crab: You really gotta search your soul and ask yourself: your cool idea really a database, or just a plugin for Postgres? And the answer is often the latter.

The problem is that postgres is not a replacement. The JSON operations are not atomic which is terrible. If you wanna use PG that's cool, but I'd suggest just avoiding JSON.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#16

Post by blue_pants »

winrid wrote: post #5

I don't doubt there are real benefits for them to switch but BTW this is not true: > Difficulty configuring database transactions: With MongoDB, setting up transactions was not trivial because it required running MongoDB in cluster mode with various configuration overhead; this made it extremely difficult, for instance, for customers to run a simple POC of Infisical because it required a production setup of MongoDB.…

Are there any disadvantages to using transactions with a single-instance replica set?

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#17

Post by mulmboy »

winrid wrote: post #15
paulmd wrote: post #7

In this world you either evolve to Elastic/Cassandra/etc or return to Postgres :crab: You really gotta search your soul and ask yourself: your cool idea really a database, or just a plugin for Postgres? And the answer is often the latter.

The problem is that postgres is not a replacement. The JSON operations are not atomic which is terrible. If you wanna use PG that's cool, but I'd suggest just avoiding JSON.

How are JSON operations not atomic? Genuinely curious

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#18

Post by radiospiel »

winrid wrote: post #15
paulmd wrote: post #7

In this world you either evolve to Elastic/Cassandra/etc or return to Postgres :crab: You really gotta search your soul and ask yourself: your cool idea really a database, or just a plugin for Postgres? And the answer is often the latter.

The problem is that postgres is not a replacement. The JSON operations are not atomic which is terrible. If you wanna use PG that's cool, but I'd suggest just avoiding JSON.

> The JSON operations are not atomic

I hear this today the first time. What exactly os not atomic, and is there a resource with more details?

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#19

Post by Joel_Mckay »

smt88 wrote: post #4
vmatsiiako wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say "Mongo is on life support" – it's actually a very successful business growing 30% YoY on a massive scale. Yet, I agree that the license switch has definitely damaged their long-term ecosystem.

They grew 30% if you look at revenue, but that's not how people determine whether a business is healthy. EBITDA is a better metric, and that number was getting dramatically worse every year until 2023. But even in 2023, EBITDA was -$202M. I don't see it ever approaching $0. So it's still a shit business on top of a shit product that no one ever really needed.

I think anyone who administers mongodb would agree it has a list of very dangerous behaviors for novices.

Try to upgrade a running instance node between some versions, and one may thrash object keys or worse. Best to dump and re-load your data every major upgrade to recover all set properties... and there still may be slight differences in the query language later. Wait, your data sets are 1.5TiB per node.... that is a lot of downtime...

The cursor, projection, and re-format queries can be very good at reducing reporting traffic. However, the 3 page long syntax can be unreadable to the uninitiated. The json essentially jams a bunch of equivalent SQL queries in 1 transaction, but you still have to be careful as there is no real guarantee of ordering without auto-indices in clusters.

mongodb is not as clean as SQL, but works for storing constantly changing meta data. i.e. if you find your SQL schema ends up with tuples that have a lot of poorly designed null entries, table edits, and or simply implements an object storage class abstraction in massive meta-data and object-class catch-all tables.

And yes, the mongodb new licensing model telegraphs an unfavorable policy posture. However, I do understand not wanting fortune 500 companies exploiting your teams time for free.

Profit is not an indication of quality, but rather fiscal utility. ;-)

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#20

Post by renegade-otter »

The irony of it all is that MongoDB actually matured and you do not have to jump through hoops to have, say, transactions.

I am ALL for Postgres, I even wrote a post about the importance of being fluent in relational databases: https://renegadeotter.com/2023/11/12/your-database-skills-ar...

What grinds my gears is the whiplash caused by this frantic stampede from one hype to the next.

I am just waiting for the AI hype to blow over and for everyone to rediscover Hadoop, or something.

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