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Keep in mind that the Postgres hammer is a non-standard hammer. Sure it is pretty SQL compliant (except there are no dirty reads thanks to MVCC), but if you use

Keep in mind that the Postgres hammer is a non-standard hammer. Sure it is pretty SQL compliant (except there are no dirty reads thanks to MVCC), but if you use JSON or the arrays or the many other wonderful features of Postgres, you are now tied to Postgres. You are also slowly inching your way into Document Stores.

tootie 9y ago
The biggest pro to Dynamo of Postgres in an AWS world is just price. It's very attractive to try to shove a square peg in a round hole to save money. Of course, you end up costing yourself far more in the long run if it's such a bad fit.
orf 9y ago
The same can be said about any database though. No one is like another. SQL as a standard is roughly followed, and PostgreSQL is very compliant. That's more than can be said about any non-relational database - each has it's own query language. I use JSON fields and arrays quite a bit, but that doesn't mean I need a document store. It means I have small portions of data that is non-relational, or is better suited to use arrays/json than strict tables, but I still want everything else consistent, enforced, and also have all the other bells and whistles Postgres gives you (FTS, partial indexes, rich types everywhere, ACID, the list goes on and on). Being tied to Postgres is often better than being tied to a document store. At least you can dip your toes into non-rel as little or much as you like (where it makes sense), rather than diving in at the deep end and realizing you can't swim.
- virmundi 9y ago
  What about ArangoDB? You can perform joins, even across the cluster. It's a document store. You don't have transactions across the cluster (yet, I'm pretty sure I'm right). You get sharding and distribution automatically. Again, at this point you're out of the SQL world, why not go fully out?
eropple 9y ago
I can't think of a datastore whose purely SQL-compliant feature set is worth using; to that end, using any RDBMS with a reasonable feature set is going to be a product lock-in of some kind. And I've been around and babysat a lot of people's Mongo stuff; I'll die on the hill that being tied to Postgres is a hell of a lot better for the 10th, the 50th, and the 98th percentile of developers (and companies) than a MongoDB or the like.
- virmundi 9y ago
  When I design systems I try to stay SQL compliant. This has benefited me in the past: From SQL Server to Oracle. Internally one can use optimizations like indexes unique to a DB, but in the end the client view is entirely only SQL.

tootie 9y ago

The biggest pro to Dynamo of Postgres in an AWS world is just price. It's very attractive to try to shove a square peg in a round hole to save money. Of course, you end up costing yourself far more in the long run if it's such a bad fit.

orf 9y ago

The same can be said about any database though. No one is like another. SQL as a standard is roughly followed, and PostgreSQL is very compliant. That's more than can be said about any non-relational database - each has it's own query language. I use JSON fields and arrays quite a bit, but that doesn't mean I need a document store. It means I have small portions of data that is non-relational, or is better suited to use arrays/json than strict tables, but I still want everything else consistent, enforced, and also have all the other bells and whistles Postgres gives you (FTS, partial indexes, rich types everywhere, ACID, the list goes on and on). Being tied to Postgres is often better than being tied to a document store. At least you can dip your toes into non-rel as little or much as you like (where it makes sense), rather than diving in at the deep end and realizing you can't swim.

virmundi 9y ago
What about ArangoDB? You can perform joins, even across the cluster. It's a document store. You don't have transactions across the cluster (yet, I'm pretty sure I'm right). You get sharding and distribution automatically. Again, at this point you're out of the SQL world, why not go fully out?

eropple 9y ago

I can't think of a datastore whose purely SQL-compliant feature set is worth using; to that end, using any RDBMS with a reasonable feature set is going to be a product lock-in of some kind. And I've been around and babysat a lot of people's Mongo stuff; I'll die on the hill that being tied to Postgres is a hell of a lot better for the 10th, the 50th, and the 98th percentile of developers (and companies) than a MongoDB or the like.

virmundi 9y ago
When I design systems I try to stay SQL compliant. This has benefited me in the past: From SQL Server to Oracle. Internally one can use optimizations like indexes unique to a DB, but in the end the client view is entirely only SQL.