6 ms·

Because postgres doesn't focus on the first-five-minutes experience the way Mongo does. Even the name is hard to say. Mongo is a dumb, dead-end platform, but

by Pxtl 10y ago

Because postgres doesn't focus on the first-five-minutes experience the way Mongo does. Even the name is hard to say. Mongo is a dumb, dead-end platform, but they know how important ease-of-use is.

catnaroek 10y ago
> Mongo is a dumb, dead-end platform, but they know how important ease-of-use is. By “ease of use”, do you mean “ease of making something that seems to work” or “ease of making something that actually works”? I've never used a schema-free database, and ended up thinking to myself “I'm completely sure this database can't possibly contain garbage data”. Or do programmers simply not care about data integrity anymore?
- themartorana 10y ago
  Prototyping on Mongo is bad. MySQL takes 10 seconds to install. I'm imagining with the public Docker registry, so does Postgres. How many times have you promised to fix something later and then later comes and... Prototyping is not an excuse for laziness. It does feel like some programmers don't care.
  - Pxtl 10y ago
    You can insult the developers that use Mongo or you can look at how to get those users onto a better platform. With the modern expectations of full-stack development, is it any wonder that something promising simplicity and zero-configuration data storage does well?
  - xapata 10y ago
    > MySQL Why not just prototype with Sqlite? You don't even need a server.
- StavrosK 10y ago
  The single biggest source of grief in our production database has been the one JSON field we used once to avoid adding another table. That goddamn thing has crashed the server so many times with invalid data, that I'm never using anything schemaless again. We recently migrated to a proper table and I'm thanking my lucky stars I finally got rid of that devil.
  - catnaroek 10y ago
    > I'm thanking my lucky stars I finally got rid of that devil. All that I can say is congrats, man!
  - collyw 10y ago
    JSON field? You are lucky. We have a Pickled python object stored in our database. Wonderful for debugging when its pretty much unreadable.
    - StavrosK 10y ago
      My condolences :(
- nevi-me 10y ago
  Well, I have used one and had that assertion. Ease of use means making something that works. It seems we're condoning lack of knowledge or experience with programming. If you've never used databases in your life, whether you're using SQL orNoSQL you'll likely end up with rubbish data. In the SQL world it could be that you're storing time in the wrong format, concatenating long fields, or not normalising when you should or the other way around. In NoSQL you could be reinventing the wheel, or storing data that you can't query efficiently because you can't index it well etc. All the excuses of not using some document stores beyond ACID really sound like people won't know what the heck they're doing.
  - catnaroek 10y ago
    > Well, I have used one and had that assertion. Ease of use means making something that works. For me, it means, under no circumstance, no interleaving of transactions or scheduling of commands, nothing, nichts, nada, can the database be in a state where a business rule is violated. If I need to worry what silly intermediate transaction state can be observed from another transaction, or if I need to worry whether a master record can be deleted without cascade-deleting everything that references it, then the DBMS has failed me. > not normalising when you should or the other way around. I've never seen a situation where anything less than 3NF (actually, ideally, at least EKNF) is acceptable.
manigandham 10y ago
This is key and often overlooked - MongoDB is so popular not because it's the best database but because it's so easy to get started with. Download/unzip/run to have a database engine ready. It also helps that you can also immediately store anything without any prior setup steps. Postgres/mysql/sqlserver/etc are nowhere near as easy to install, as fast to get started with or as portable to move around.
- roasm 10y ago
  With the ease of services like AWS, we never installed a database server. Pick a database flavor, version, click, click and you're up. I suppose designing the schema take a little effort, but I find it much easier than properly architecting software.
  - manigandham 10y ago
    Many if not most installations are still being done on actual dev machines and servers. While RDS and other managed services are nice, they're just a small fraction of the usage. Also the fact that managed services help so much only speaks to the fact of how difficult these relational databases typically are to work with operationally.
- dijit 10y ago
  Well, that's not entirely true. if you're on a mac you can download postgresql.app[0] which produces a small icon in the top right status bar. You don't have to install users or permissions or anything it's super easy to set up. Getting it on prod can come later but for the first five minutes it works. (granted, this neglects contrib extensions like hstore) [0] http://postgresapp.com/ http://postgresapp.com/
  - fortytw2 10y ago
    That sets up postgres. It doesn't let you get started doing CRUD operations inside your postgres though - which is where MongoDB shines, "just store my data, fuck it"
gaius 10y ago
What they neglect to mention is not that you don't need a DBA, that you are the DBA yourself. With all the responsibilities that go along with that role. Who's getting paged at 3am now...?
- collyw 10y ago
  If thats really a problem host your database on a cloud platform and let those guys do the job of a DBA. Works for me at present. I am aware its not going to be a solution for everyone, though it still sounds a lot better than being your own Mongo DBA.
  - gaius 10y ago
    The DBA is the role who is reponsible for the organizations data. Even if you outsource the routine tasks such as "doing backups" you still need someone to assume that role.
  - PeterisP 10y ago
    Cloud service doesn't really replace DBA. Yes, it will help you to cover cases like where the server phyically explodes, but that's basically irrelevant, most problems where you need a DBA are caused either by data corruption caused by application code or developer, or performance issues caused by DB structure - in those cases the cloud platform won't do anything for you, they just host the server. They can restore backups, do monitoring and tune the server, not your particular app/db structure - but all the big problems are there.
    - collyw 10y ago
      "most problems where you need a DBA are caused either by data corruption caused by application code or developer, or performance issues caused by DB structure" Is running Mongo going to solve any of those problems? Without a rigidly enforced schema I would guess those problems are going to be amplified rather than solved.

by Pxtl 10y ago

Because postgres doesn't focus on the first-five-minutes experience the way Mongo does. Even the name is hard to say. Mongo is a dumb, dead-end platform, but they know how important ease-of-use is.

catnaroek 10y ago

> Mongo is a dumb, dead-end platform, but they know how important ease-of-use is. By “ease of use”, do you mean “ease of making something that seems to work” or “ease of making something that actually works”? I've never used a schema-free database, and ended up thinking to myself “I'm completely sure this database can't possibly contain garbage data”. Or do programmers simply not care about data integrity anymore?

themartorana 10y ago
Prototyping on Mongo is bad. MySQL takes 10 seconds to install. I'm imagining with the public Docker registry, so does Postgres. How many times have you promised to fix something later and then later comes and... Prototyping is not an excuse for laziness. It does feel like some programmers don't care.
- Pxtl 10y ago
  You can insult the developers that use Mongo or you can look at how to get those users onto a better platform. With the modern expectations of full-stack development, is it any wonder that something promising simplicity and zero-configuration data storage does well?
- xapata 10y ago
  > MySQL Why not just prototype with Sqlite? You don't even need a server.
StavrosK 10y ago
The single biggest source of grief in our production database has been the one JSON field we used once to avoid adding another table. That goddamn thing has crashed the server so many times with invalid data, that I'm never using anything schemaless again. We recently migrated to a proper table and I'm thanking my lucky stars I finally got rid of that devil.
- catnaroek 10y ago
  > I'm thanking my lucky stars I finally got rid of that devil. All that I can say is congrats, man!
- collyw 10y ago
  JSON field? You are lucky. We have a Pickled python object stored in our database. Wonderful for debugging when its pretty much unreadable.
  - StavrosK 10y ago
    My condolences :(
nevi-me 10y ago
Well, I have used one and had that assertion. Ease of use means making something that works. It seems we're condoning lack of knowledge or experience with programming. If you've never used databases in your life, whether you're using SQL orNoSQL you'll likely end up with rubbish data. In the SQL world it could be that you're storing time in the wrong format, concatenating long fields, or not normalising when you should or the other way around. In NoSQL you could be reinventing the wheel, or storing data that you can't query efficiently because you can't index it well etc. All the excuses of not using some document stores beyond ACID really sound like people won't know what the heck they're doing.
- catnaroek 10y ago
  > Well, I have used one and had that assertion. Ease of use means making something that works. For me, it means, under no circumstance, no interleaving of transactions or scheduling of commands, nothing, nichts, nada, can the database be in a state where a business rule is violated. If I need to worry what silly intermediate transaction state can be observed from another transaction, or if I need to worry whether a master record can be deleted without cascade-deleting everything that references it, then the DBMS has failed me. > not normalising when you should or the other way around. I've never seen a situation where anything less than 3NF (actually, ideally, at least EKNF) is acceptable.

manigandham 10y ago

This is key and often overlooked - MongoDB is so popular not because it's the best database but because it's so easy to get started with. Download/unzip/run to have a database engine ready. It also helps that you can also immediately store anything without any prior setup steps. Postgres/mysql/sqlserver/etc are nowhere near as easy to install, as fast to get started with or as portable to move around.

roasm 10y ago
With the ease of services like AWS, we never installed a database server. Pick a database flavor, version, click, click and you're up. I suppose designing the schema take a little effort, but I find it much easier than properly architecting software.
- manigandham 10y ago
  Many if not most installations are still being done on actual dev machines and servers. While RDS and other managed services are nice, they're just a small fraction of the usage. Also the fact that managed services help so much only speaks to the fact of how difficult these relational databases typically are to work with operationally.
dijit 10y ago
Well, that's not entirely true. if you're on a mac you can download postgresql.app[0] which produces a small icon in the top right status bar. You don't have to install users or permissions or anything it's super easy to set up. Getting it on prod can come later but for the first five minutes it works. (granted, this neglects contrib extensions like hstore) [0] http://postgresapp.com/ http://postgresapp.com/
- fortytw2 10y ago
  That sets up postgres. It doesn't let you get started doing CRUD operations inside your postgres though - which is where MongoDB shines, "just store my data, fuck it"

gaius 10y ago

What they neglect to mention is not that you don't need a DBA, that you are the DBA yourself. With all the responsibilities that go along with that role. Who's getting paged at 3am now...?

collyw 10y ago
If thats really a problem host your database on a cloud platform and let those guys do the job of a DBA. Works for me at present. I am aware its not going to be a solution for everyone, though it still sounds a lot better than being your own Mongo DBA.
- gaius 10y ago
  The DBA is the role who is reponsible for the organizations data. Even if you outsource the routine tasks such as "doing backups" you still need someone to assume that role.
- PeterisP 10y ago
  Cloud service doesn't really replace DBA. Yes, it will help you to cover cases like where the server phyically explodes, but that's basically irrelevant, most problems where you need a DBA are caused either by data corruption caused by application code or developer, or performance issues caused by DB structure - in those cases the cloud platform won't do anything for you, they just host the server. They can restore backups, do monitoring and tune the server, not your particular app/db structure - but all the big problems are there.
  - collyw 10y ago
    "most problems where you need a DBA are caused either by data corruption caused by application code or developer, or performance issues caused by DB structure" Is running Mongo going to solve any of those problems? Without a rigidly enforced schema I would guess those problems are going to be amplified rather than solved.