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The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

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Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#111

Post by madsbuch »

kqr wrote: post #69
cpursley wrote: post #60

The one unsolicited piece of tech advice I always give is “Just use Postgres”. Postgres Is Enough: https://gist.github.com/cpursley/c8fb81fe8a7e5df038158bdfe0f... There’s some Mongo/json alternatives in the list if you really need unstructured data. And there’s a huge plug-in ecosystem as well for just about anything you could imagine.

But isn't there a point before which "just use sqlite" is more appropriate advice?

I am curious on this. Why do you think SQLite is simpler than Postgres? and in what setting is that the case?

Sqlite comes with the headache of managing an attached volume.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#112

Post by blksv »

aerhardt wrote: post #62
bandrami wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is great in the early stages of development, but people actually deploy like this

The benefits of going schemaless in the early stages of development are highly suspect in my experience. The time that one might save in data modeling and migrations comes out from the other end with shittier code that’s harder to reason about.

My perspective is that using NoSQL does not save time in data modeling and migrations. Moreover, one has to pay in increased time for these activities, because (a) in most cases, data has to follow some model in order to be processable anyway, the question is whether we formally document and enforce it at a relational storage, or leave it to external means (which we have to implement) to benefit from some specifically-optimized non-relational storage, (b) NoSQL DBs return data (almost) as stored, one cannot rearrange results as freely as with SQL queries, not even close, thus much more careful design is required (effectively, one has to design not only schema but also the appropriate denormalization of it), (c) migrations are manual and painful, so one had better arrive at the right design at once rather than iterate on it.

That is, of course, if one doesn't want to deal with piles of shitty code and even more shitty data.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#113

Post by lutoma »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #105
thiht wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postgres is not hype though. There's very few legitimate use cases for not using a RDBMS as a main data store, and Postgres happens to be the most popular nowadays, for good reasons.

In my experience MySql is more popular. Worked at several companies that used MySql, none that used Postgres. Kids at universities still use XAMMP to learn databases.

In my experience MySQL is still commonly used in the PHP world, but everything else is mostly Postgres

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#114

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#115

Post by eknkc »

iambateman wrote: post #65

I use MySQL for everything - always have. Can someone hit me with a few reasons why you would use Postgres over MySQL? I don’t have any familial affinity to any database, but I’m not sure what the benefits to Postgres are relative to MySQL.

Last time I used MySQL I had some delete triggers to clean up some stuff.

Apparently MySQL does not run delete triggers in case the rows are deleted due to a foreign key cascade.

Eveytime I used its slightly advanced features, I ran into such problems. With PostgreSQL I do not need to think if this would work.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#116

Post by GiorgioG »

arp242 wrote: post #50
renegade-otter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not calling Postgres hype - it should have never been NOT hype. It's a reasonable default for most problems, Now all I read about is how Postgres is awesome, as if it's this great new thing. I guess that makes sense, as the new generation of engineers is rediscovering stable, reliable, lean technologies after a decade of excesses with "exotic" tech. For grey beards, it's all very odd. Like, "where have you all b…

I remember Robert C. Martin ("Uncle Bob") going on about how No-SQL will replace literally all SQL and that there is literally not a single use case for relational data and SQL. I wonder if he ever came back on that. Now, my opinion of Martin in general is not especially high and he's a bit of a controversial figure, but it wasn't just the kids. And Martin is also all about reliable software, so that makes it even mo…

Unpopular opinion, Robert C Martin has caused more harm than good. People take his ideas and blindly follow them no matter the cost. I’m looking at you clean architecture.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#117

Post by phamilton »

iambateman wrote: post #65

I use MySQL for everything - always have. Can someone hit me with a few reasons why you would use Postgres over MySQL? I don’t have any familial affinity to any database, but I’m not sure what the benefits to Postgres are relative to MySQL.

Some things that are nice in Postgres and missing in MySQL:

- Create constraints as NOT VALID and later VALIDATE them. This allows you to create them without expensive locks.

- explain (analyze, buffers). I miss this so much.

- Row level security.

- TOAST simplicity for variable text fields. MySQL has so many caveats around row size and what features are allowed and when. Postgres just simplifies it all.

- Rich extension ecosystem. Whether it's full text search or vector data, extensions are pretty simple to use (even in managed environments, a wide range of extensions are available).

Is that (and more) enough for me to migrate a large MySQL to postgres? No. But I would bias towards postgres for new projects.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#118

Post by simonw »

bradleyjg wrote: post #102
thiht wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Postgres is not hype though. There's very few legitimate use cases for not using a RDBMS as a main data store, and Postgres happens to be the most popular nowadays, for good reasons.

The number one reason being that it’s free. In a purely technical comparison it is not at the top of the list.

What's top of the list technically?

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#119

Post by JJMcJ »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #38

Ah, the old "I used a wrong product for my problem and now I complain the product is bad because it does not suit my case." defence. MongoDB is a document database. It is not supposed to be good at relations. Also lacking support with cloud providers and lacking experience with MongoDB is not MongoDB's problem, it is your poor decisionmaking. If you value those things, you should have taken it into account when you w…

> MongoDB is a document database.

Thank you. A one sentence clarification of the issues in Mongo vs RDBMS.

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