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The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

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Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#251

Post by jimbokun »

thiht wrote: post #56
renegade-otter wrote: post #20

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 hyp…

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 opinion the use case is when your data no longer fits on a single, potentially very large, server. Automatic distribution and replication and rebalancing of data is a tricky problem and something like Cassandra handles those very well.

Or Cockroach DB or similar, if you still need relational capabilities.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#252

Post by Pengtuzi »

wlll wrote: post #89
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.

I do scaling and performance work, mostly with Rails apps, but a significant amount of the work is database level and not language specific. I've used both postgres and MySQL (and a few other databases) going back to 2000. The best thing I can hear from a company when I start is "We use Postgres". If they're using postgres then I know there's likely a far smoother path to performance than with MySQL. It has better to…

Two paragraphs about yourself and ending with a very vague sentence that “answers” their question. 10/10

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#253

Post by chrisjc »

zachmu wrote: post #246

PostgreSQL really is eating the database world. Although in this case, the authors originally chose an architecture that was poorly suited to their data model. They had relational data and put it in a non-relational store. This was obviously always going to cause problems.

In my experience, it's always come down to either using a specific database type for the wrong job, or using a database type the wrong way.

- Treating an OLAP like an OLTP.

- Using a document store for relational data bc managing relations in SQL is tedious and slows development/progress/features.

- Using OLTP for analytics.

- and so on...

And the usual reaction ensues. Conversations begin about migrating to another product while not really paying attention to interaction patterns and the intent/reason for the various workloads.

Of course such migrations only lead to either...

- Place-shifting the issues, or

- Resolving the issues that lead to the migration while creating new ones that didn't exist before. Workloads that were suited to the existing DB are now mismatched to the new one.

However, Postgres seems to be a pretty safe bet when such migrations are undertaken due to how versatile it is. Personally, I don't care which database is used (within reason of course). Just use the right database type for the job.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#254

Post by jimbokun »

belter wrote: post #99
arp242 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I also remember Michael Stonebraker basically saying something, but being ignored...Along the lines of "I will see you all map reduce and nosql people in 20 years, after you have all reinvented SQL...." Not an actual quote but a factual statement

Because he realized you can parse SQL and generate the equivalent of a map reduce job on the backend to execute it.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#255

Post by bit_flipper »

I've run Postgres at large scale (dozens of machines) at multiple companies. I've also run MongoDB at large scale at multiple companies. I like both generally. I don't really care about data modelling differences - you can build the same applications with approximately the same schema with both if you know what you're doing.

I don't understand how folks seemingly ignore Postgres' non-existent out of the box HA and horizontal scaling support. For small scale projects that don't care about these things, fair enough! But in my experience every Postgres installation is a snowflake with cobbled together extensions, other third party software, and home-rolled scripts to make up for this gap. These third party pieces of software are often buggy, half-maintained, and under-documented. This is exacerbated by Postgres' major version file format changes making upgrades extremely painful.

As far as I can tell, there is no interest in making these features work well in Postgres core because all of the contributors' companies make their money selling solutions for HA/sharding. This is an area where MySQL is so significantly better than Postgres (because so many large Internet companies use MySQL) that it surprises me people aren't more unhappy with the state of things. I don't really want to run another Postgres cluster myself again. For a single node thing where I don't care about HA/scaling I do quite like it, though.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#256

Post by jimbokun »

zo1 wrote: post #225
arp242 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even know about that; I checked his Twitter, and first thing is a reply to the Baltimore bridge collapse: > Doors and wheels fall off airplanes. Hundreds of illegal immigrants assault and overrun border guards in Texas. We can’t even muster support for our allies in the security council. But at least our pronouns are in order. https://twitter.com/unclebobmartin/status/177262869295654553... You really need to…

From the other side, people like me, see your odd dismissive behaviour in the same light. This bridge and hundreds of other things going wrong throughout the world atm are all symptoms of some sort of rotten problem, and I honestly don't know why you guys are so adamant about dismissing it. Almost as if you want to see it all come crashing down. Pure evil, as Trump would call it.

Is the rate of these incidents increasing, decreasing, or about the same?

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#257

Post by jimbokun »

sph wrote: post #52
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…

Excited, vocal users make the most noise. Somehow the entire Mongo DB era passed me through and I never used it once. I used to use MySQL in the 2000s, and switched to PostgreSQL in the 2010s.

My company considered it, but went with Cassandra instead.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#258

Post by jimbokun »

benterix wrote: post #127
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…

> For grey beards, it's all very odd. Like, "where have you all been?" To be frank, PostgreSQL has evolved a lot since the late nineties. There was a time where people preferred MySQL over it at it seemed to work faster, certain things were easier and so on.

MySQL was more popular for a while, but from a technical standpoint Postgres was always ahead.

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#259

Post by kcartlidge »

I've used (and introduced) MongoDB in production. Though I much prefer PostgreSQL, SQLite, MySQL, or SQL Server, for some use cases a document database is fine.

However as I discovered myself, once you realise you need to use Mongoose with it you should usually take that as a prompt to consider going relational.

Don't get me wrong, Mongoose is a good package. But the things it solves could likely be better fixed by moving away from MongoDB - I'd go so far as to say that in most cases Mongoose should only be added to help an existing project; if you need it from the start you probably should go relational.

(YMMV and there will be exceptions.)

Re: The Great Migration from MongoDB to PostgreSQL

#260

Post by rjbwork »

zo1 wrote: post #225
arp242 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't even know about that; I checked his Twitter, and first thing is a reply to the Baltimore bridge collapse: > Doors and wheels fall off airplanes. Hundreds of illegal immigrants assault and overrun border guards in Texas. We can’t even muster support for our allies in the security council. But at least our pronouns are in order. https://twitter.com/unclebobmartin/status/177262869295654553... You really need to…

From the other side, people like me, see your odd dismissive behaviour in the same light. This bridge and hundreds of other things going wrong throughout the world atm are all symptoms of some sort of rotten problem, and I honestly don't know why you guys are so adamant about dismissing it. Almost as if you want to see it all come crashing down. Pure evil, as Trump would call it.

>of some sort of rotten problem

Agree. Out of control neo-feudal lords taking up all the slack out of every system they can get their tendrils into in the name of efficiency, thus endangering us all in order to extract as much profit as possible out of our entire economic system.

The "other side"'s solution tends to be to further deregulate industry and the economy, and to empower and lower the tax burden of these neo-feudal lords, all while pointing at gays, trans-folk, and immigrants as if they are the reason people can't afford rent and bridges are falling down.

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