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From my experience with both PostgreSQL and RethinkDB (and other NoSQL stores): For SQL, complex queries, and data warehousing: yes. It's an excellent database
by api 10y ago
From my experience with both PostgreSQL and RethinkDB (and other NoSQL stores):
For SQL, complex queries, and data warehousing: yes. It's an excellent database and I'm not sure why you'd pick another SQL DB unless it were a lot better on point two.
For high availability and scaling: no, absolutely not.
The problem with the latter is an arcane deployment process and arcane error messages that provide constant worry that you're doing something wrong. It's a many week engineering project to deploy HA Postgres, while HA RethinkDB takes hours -- followed by some testing for prudence... our testing revealed that it does "just work" at least at our scale. We were overjoyed.
The docs for Postgres HA and clustering are also horrible. There are like five different ways to do it and they're all in an unknown state of completion or readiness.
Of course if/when we do want complex queries and more compact storage, we will probably offload data from the RethinkDB cluster to... drum roll... a PostgreSQL database. Of course that will probably be for analytics done "offline" in the sense that if the DB goes down for a bit we are fine. HA is not needed there.
TL;DR: everything has its limitations.
- jeltz 10y agoI do not get what you refer to by arcane error messages that give constant worry. While some error messages need to be googled I think PostgreSQL is pretty good at only printing error messages when something is wrong. So if you are getting strange errors from PostgreSQL it is almost certainly an issue which should be fixed.
- manigandham 10y agoScaling (horizontal + vertical) and HA are the biggest weaknesses of Postgres. It's modern in features and flexibility but still struggles with core infrastructure issues and performance.