PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests • Hacker News Board

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#41

Post by Xylakant » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:22 AM UTC

dschiptsov wrote: post #37

pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since NoSQL movement started comparing their database options with SQL based ones.

Come on. To call itself a database the product should have state-of-the-art storage technology implemented, not just a simple API which always returns OK before actual data has been committed to disk. In old times you could suddenly switch off power of a running Informix server and it will correctly restore the state on that very moment after reboot, dropping all partially (unfinished) transactions, keeping all the c…

So CouchdDB qualifies? Given a proper hardware underneath it will at most loose the last, unfinished write.

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#42

Post by hnhipster » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:23 AM UTC

This is very interesting. Around when MongoDB was quickly becoming the cool thing to do I'd ask people about why it is better than just storing things in Postgres. People would have answers that would be grammatically correct but would not make any sense.

That being said, I find it weird that now it is cool to make fun of MongoDB. Some people on this thread have even said they want to know if a service is using MongoDB and they'd not use that service. I am pretty sure they'd be all over Stripe (who store your money related stuff in MongoDB) in a different thread.

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#43

Post by qwerta » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:28 AM UTC

hnhipster wrote: post #42

This is very interesting. Around when MongoDB was quickly becoming the cool thing to do I'd ask people about why it is better than just storing things in Postgres. People would have answers that would be grammatically correct but would not make any sense. That being said, I find it weird that now it is cool to make fun of MongoDB. Some people on this thread have even said they want to know if a service is using Mongo…

Decade ago it was the same story with mysql.

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#44

Post by tszming » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:30 AM UTC

MongoDB work well ONLY if indexes (and working set) fit in the memory. What are the indexes size in the benchmark? (I doubt as I see you are running a 145GB database on a 32GB instance)

http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/ensure-indexes-fit-r...

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#45

Post by yangyang » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:31 AM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #10

Will be great if PostgreSQL ends up as a storage engine option in MongoDB like InnoDB. Then you have the better engine of PostgreSQL with the superior clustering, sharding and end user experience of MongoDB. That said these articles are pretty pointless. Performance isn't the reason companies are switching to MongoDB.

Are you confusing MySQL and MongoDB? InnoDB is a MySQL storage engine.

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#46

Post by yangyang » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:33 AM UTC

jakozaur wrote: post #14

threeseed wrote: post #10

Will be great if PostgreSQL ends up as a storage engine option in MongoDB like InnoDB. Then you have the better engine of PostgreSQL with the superior clustering, sharding and end user experience of MongoDB. That said these articles are pretty pointless. Performance isn't the reason companies are switching to MongoDB.

How about implementing MongoDB API on top of the PostgreSQL? Then sell it companies which started with MongoDB, but run into some scalability/reliability issues.

Someone's already done a proof of concept of this, see https://github.com/JerrySievert/mongolike

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#47

Post by hnhipster » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:37 AM UTC

bshimmin wrote: post #39

I'm sort of struggling to imagine anyone really using MongoDB at all in a couple of years. But then again, plenty of shops still use MySQL (and one of my clients uses DB2...).

Exactly! I can't imagine anyone using MongoDB at all in a couple of years either. Everything will be in Node!

But then again, I am going to say the opposite of what I just said to hedge my bet and point out plenty of shops still use MySQL. No serious company like YouTube, Facebook, or until recently Google Ads would use it.

I love sitting in my armchair and passing technical judgements without providing any technical details!

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#48

Post by csmitheu » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:39 AM UTC

dschiptsov wrote: post #37

pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since NoSQL movement started comparing their database options with SQL based ones.

Come on. To call itself a database the product should have state-of-the-art storage technology implemented, not just a simple API which always returns OK before actual data has been committed to disk. In old times you could suddenly switch off power of a running Informix server and it will correctly restore the state on that very moment after reboot, dropping all partially (unfinished) transactions, keeping all the c…

You are right on all counts.

As someone who evaluated and eventually recommended against implementing MongoDB for a new product, I entirely agree with you. The Mongo implementation was shot after about three months of wasted time after failure in pre-production testing. It was rolled back at great cost to SQL Server with a light document-style abstraction as Mongo failed miserably on precisely what you said: reliability, consistency, scalability and storage management.

Proper relational databases (PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server in my scope of experience) can take an absolute incredible amount of punishment without breaking any guarantees. The relational bit above is optional but it is at least something you can choose to use or not.

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#49

Post by krylon » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 8:55 AM UTC

I never really "got" the new wave of NoSQL databases. Mongo seemed to be the one I could most easily wrap my head around, but still.

I was never sure, though, if that meant I had never faced a problem suitable for one of these DBMSs or if my mind is just so warped by years of using relational engines (mostly Postgres, or SQLite for simple projects) that I could not think of modeling my data any other way.

Recently though, I had to get familiar with the database schema of the ERP system we use at work, plus some modifications that have been done to it over the years, and it kind of feels to me like somebody was trying force a square peg through a round hole (i.e. trying to model data in relational terms, either not fully "getting" the relational model or using data that simply refuses to be modeled in that way).

I sometimes think the people who wrote the ERP system might have enjoyed a NoSQL DBMS. Then again, with a multi-user ERP system, you really want transactions (personally, I feel that ACID-compliant transactions are single most useful benefit of RDBMS engines), and most NoSQL-engines seem to kind of not have them.

Re: PostgreSQL Outperforms MongoDB in New Round of Tests

#50

Post by eksith » Sat, Sep 27, 2014, 9:02 AM UTC

bshimmin wrote: post #39

I'm sort of struggling to imagine anyone really using MongoDB at all in a couple of years. But then again, plenty of shops still use MySQL (and one of my clients uses DB2...).

Changing databases is extremely painful if there's a fair amount of data already stored there. It doesn't matter how "database agnostic" the code was originally, there are too many edge cases that tend to become front cases over time that you have to adjust for your specific database.

But just like with MySQL, I imagine those who can migrate to another DB would do so at the first opportunity or wait for the equivalent of MariaDB to make a "drop-in replacement" in lieu of messing with their application code.