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The genius and folly of MongoDB

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Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#11

Post by mattdeboard »

bithive123 wrote: post #4

This article doesn't really make a case for "genius" -- "saving grace", maybe. And in what universe are the Redis data structures "crazy"?

I think the genius referred to is in its simplicity. This simplicity let MongoDB get a product to market very quickly, as well as the inherent goodness of making simple things.

I think in MongoDB's case, the getting-to-market part pushed a little too hard on the make-it-simply part. Simple is good but a thing should be as simple as possible, no less.

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#12

Post by eli »

hayksaakian wrote: post #6
bsg75 wrote: post #2

> MongoDB is easy to make fun of. I think more often its easy to poke fun at _how_ its used. When any tool or tech is used globally, before knowing its limitations, problems are likely. Attempting to use MongoDB in all storage or persistence scenarios is no more sensible than using MySQL in all cases. Yes, there is marketing around this product that must be looked at critically - after taking into account that many n…

I think the difference is you don't get made fun of online for using MySQL for everything

Nonsense, this is a religious debate. People get made fun of for using MySQL as a regular relational database.

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#13

Post by bsg75 »

hayksaakian wrote: post #6
bsg75 wrote: post #2

> MongoDB is easy to make fun of. I think more often its easy to poke fun at _how_ its used. When any tool or tech is used globally, before knowing its limitations, problems are likely. Attempting to use MongoDB in all storage or persistence scenarios is no more sensible than using MySQL in all cases. Yes, there is marketing around this product that must be looked at critically - after taking into account that many n…

I think the difference is you don't get made fun of online for using MySQL for everything

Empathy perhaps.

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#14

Post by rogerbinns »

There are also people using MongoDB and finding it meets their needs well, and don't feel the need to keep writing about how everything sucks or is wonderful. (I'm one of them.)

None of how MongoDB works is a secret. And just like everything else it has sweet spots and problem areas. And like many others, development continues and it gets better.

The database does not get the job done - it is a tool to help get the job done.

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#15

Post by yummyfajitas »

functional_test wrote: post #8

He's right that MongoDB could use improvements like string interning so you don't need to worry about field names. But overall, I think this article is very misleading. If you use MongoDB in production, you should definitely take he time to learn about the durability options on the database side AND in your driver. By using them appropriately, you can have as little or as much as you like. Data sets larger than 100GB…

For what use cases is Mongo the right tool?

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#16

Post by orthecreedence »

rogerbinns wrote: post #14

There are also people using MongoDB and finding it meets their needs well, and don't feel the need to keep writing about how everything sucks or is wonderful. (I'm one of them.) None of how MongoDB works is a secret. And just like everything else it has sweet spots and problem areas. And like many others, development continues and it gets better. The database does not get the job done - it is a tool to help get the j…

> None of how MongoDB works is a secret.

Maybe not now, but this hasn't always been the case. The fact that they had (have?) a global write lock was completely buried on the doc site for ages. Benchmarks were waved in front of developer's faces to distract them from the "drivers don't actually write data, they just blast it out in every direction and hope it lands somewhere good" BS.

I don't use Mongo anymore, and I think a lot of it has not to do with the database itself, but with the way 10gen used their marketing machine in a dishonest way. They incurred a lot of trust-debt, and now have a serious amount of work to do to pay it back.

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#17

Post by mattdeboard »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #15
functional_test wrote: post #8

He's right that MongoDB could use improvements like string interning so you don't need to worry about field names. But overall, I think this article is very misleading. If you use MongoDB in production, you should definitely take he time to learn about the durability options on the database side AND in your driver. By using them appropriately, you can have as little or as much as you like. Data sets larger than 100GB…

For what use cases is Mongo the right tool?

It's "a" right tool in any case where distributed storage of unstructured data in JSON format is wanted, where database-level locks won't be an issue of concern, and availability is the primary, overriding concern.

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#18

Post by jbooth »

cincinnatus wrote: post #7
hayksaakian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference is you don't get made fun of online for using MySQL for everything

MySQL is richly deserving of ridicule as well. It's ubiquity is unfortunate.

If you're going to comment so strongly, some explanation of why it deserves such ridicule would contribute much more value to the discussion.

Re: The genius and folly of MongoDB

#19

Post by jbooth »

orthecreedence wrote: post #16
rogerbinns wrote: post #14

There are also people using MongoDB and finding it meets their needs well, and don't feel the need to keep writing about how everything sucks or is wonderful. (I'm one of them.) None of how MongoDB works is a secret. And just like everything else it has sweet spots and problem areas. And like many others, development continues and it gets better. The database does not get the job done - it is a tool to help get the j…

> None of how MongoDB works is a secret. Maybe not now, but this hasn't always been the case. The fact that they had (have?) a global write lock was completely buried on the doc site for ages. Benchmarks were waved in front of developer's faces to distract them from the "drivers don't actually write data, they just blast it out in every direction and hope it lands somewhere good" BS. I don't use Mongo anymore, and I…

That's all true, but they were giving 90% of their users exactly what they wanted:

"We value feature-set and expressiveness much more than scalability at our data size, but we want to feel like we're big data too so say some of that stuff"

And that's their brilliance, they listened to what people said they wanted and then gave them what they really wanted.

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