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Poll: What database does your company/you use?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What database does your company/you use?

#81

Post by christiansmith »

bdcravens wrote: post #76
christiansmith wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be good advice if you're building cookie cutter systems for clients that have high turnover of contractors, but for startups I think it's horrible. I'd take one person that really groks devops and database internals well enough to make informed choices over a million one-size-fits-all SQL/Mongo+MVC devs. Any day of the week.

but for startups I think it's horrible. Why? Wouldn't it make more sense for startups to color within the lines, in terms of getting features to market faster? I'd take one person that really groks devops and database internals well enough to make informed choices Funded or not, a startup has the responsibility to turn every dollar into a feature that creates revenue, not architecture.

First, I never said "don't use SQL, even where it makes sense." The original commenter wrote, "advice to anyone deciding on a database".

I strongly disagree with the notion that any practicing or aspiring creator should refuse to learn about and consider the full range of tools at their disposal, simply because there's a popular default choice.

Specialized tools provide a form of leverage to those who understand and employ them wisely. Every problem I have ever come across that is sufficiently difficult and interesting to warrant forming a startup requires deeper insight on a technical level than "just ignore everything else and use X".

Can you imagine if the founders of Google took this kind of advice?

Re: Poll: What database does your company/you use?

#83

Post by BareNakedCoder »

wting wrote: post #62
rMBP wrote: post #42

IBM Domino... :-(

I worked on Domino--it's a mail server that uses DB2.

Poor Domino. Domino is a NoSQL-ish distributed document database and application platform that traces its roots back to 1989. Mail is just one possible application that happens to come out-of-the-box. Domino was mismanaged by IBM after its purchase of Lotus. If IBM had only provided more killer apps out-of-the-box like project management, etc that businesses need (instead of hoping 3rd parties would write 'em) it could dominated (pun?). Instead, we have MS SharePoint (blah!). In fact, today Domino sucks ... but I do get misty eyed thinking about what it could have been.

Re: Poll: What database does your company/you use?

#85

Post by ahjones »

calinet6 wrote: post #70
fragsworth wrote: post #31

A word of opinionated advice to anyone deciding on a database to use for their new project: Just go with something popular (MySQL, Postgres, Mongo, etc.), or go with an Amazon hosted cloud database if you really don't want to set anything up (RDS, SimpleDB, DynamoDB). There's no good reason to start a project with other databases. If you're worried about the scalability of something like MySQL when you haven't even g…

Better advice: just use Postgres. Three reasons: 1) your data is probably relational, even if you think it's not, 2) if you have non-relational records, Postgres has JSON and hash storage types that perform better than most NoSQL databases, and 3) The architecture, standards compliance, and sheer capabilities of Postgres are all best in class. Seriously, if you want to read some good C, peruse the PostgreSQL source.…

RDS can be Postgres, but isn't always. You can choose from MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and Postgres, but Postgres support is currently in beta [1].

[1]: https://aws.amazon.com/rds/postgresql/

Re: Poll: What database does your company/you use?

#86

Post by raquo »

MasterScrat wrote: post #58
fragsworth wrote: post #31

A word of opinionated advice to anyone deciding on a database to use for their new project: Just go with something popular (MySQL, Postgres, Mongo, etc.), or go with an Amazon hosted cloud database if you really don't want to set anything up (RDS, SimpleDB, DynamoDB). There's no good reason to start a project with other databases. If you're worried about the scalability of something like MySQL when you haven't even g…

What exactly is wrong with Tokyo Cabinet?

I would guess, very few people have any experience with it, let alone know its quirks and good reasons to use it.

I wouldn't build my MVP on obscure technologies just because they're hip or promise something useful when you have 1M users...

Re: Poll: What database does your company/you use?

#87

Post by Sami_Lehtinen »

bshimmin wrote: post #47
buro9 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only after you had voted and reloaded the page. Otherwise the effect would be to promote the most popular options. Ideally when you hadn't voted, the ordering would be random.

Has anyone written a little web app to turn an HN poll into a nice chart, automagically? (Extra hipster points for using D3 and some random and inappropriate visualisation no one has ever heard of.)

Results as chart: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7729603

Re: Poll: What database does your company/you use?

#89

Post by Pci »

"Some companies have valid reasons not to start prototyping with postgres, it's just yours isn't one of them" - anon

I've found that to be true time and time again. With other systems it's easy to quickly paint yourself into a corner, with postgres it's fairly straightforward to move to another system, e.g. cassandra/mongo/couch/etc (that's IF you actually ever need to move from postgres)

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