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Well, I for one think PostgreSQL is overrated. The number one reason for why people want NoSQL is horizontal scaling and for that PostgreSQL is terrible, with

Well, I for one think PostgreSQL is overrated. The number one reason for why people want NoSQL is horizontal scaling and for that PostgreSQL is terrible, with all available solutions being hacks that don't work.

fermuch 9y ago
I second this. Mongo clusters are easy to manage, and the aggregation pipeline or MapReduce engines do wonders on a sharded cluster with tons of data. That's the selling point of mongo for me.
- nicholassmith 9y ago
  That's interesting to me as I've been looking at Mongo aggregations for a solution to a problem but couldn't find any research on the performance of them.
- ComputerGuru 9y ago
  It doesn't matter how easy to is to scale if it doesn't do it right. You can win all the internet points when it comes to speed and ease-of-use but it doesn't matter if it comes at the cost of data integrity.
  - Diederich 9y ago
    > It doesn't matter how easy to is to scale if it doesn't do it right. I would refer you to an earlier comment: > In general NoSQL solutions are optimized for certain use-cases at the detriment of others Your definition of 'right' is absolutely not the only definition of 'right'. More to the point: there are a lot of problem spaces where the data integrity provided by MongoDB are more than sufficient.
    - ComputerGuru 9y ago
      Sorry, I meant "correct" and not "right," as the former is objective and the latter can be (though often isn't) subjective. MongoDB is not correct; in fact, it is provably incorrect. If your needs to don't require correctness, then by all means.
- orf 9y ago
  > with tons of data Define tons of data. I'll bet a beer that what you say can fit on a single postgres instance and even be small enough to run fine on a cheapish developer laptop.
kod 9y ago
Citus works just fine.
qaq 9y ago
what % of people have workload beyond something that PG on i3.16xlarge can handle?
- hendzen 9y ago
  people who don't want to get woken up if Amazon decides to terminate said i3.16xlarge...
  - jlarocco 9y ago
    Missed the point completely...
    - acdha 9y ago
      I think you should reconsider that dismissal: everyone needs n > 1 instances for reliability while increasingly few tasks require more {CPU,RAM,IOPs} than a single server can provide. That means that a growing percentage of problems will require clustering for reliability more than performance, and that favors the easiest to manage since in most cases every option will be fast enough.
  - qaq 9y ago
    Not a fan of AWS or cloud in general but accepted that this the direction the world is going for now. The AWS instance type was purely for illustration purposes.
- KallDrexx 9y ago
  It's also about locality of your data. Having a global infrastructure means 150-200ms minimum latency per query if you have a system in India or Singapore with a database server in a US data center region. That adds up quick.
  - qaq 9y ago
    That is orthogonal concern to what is being discussed if you run geo distributed Mongo cluster you will either have slow queries or will compromise on data integrity.
hiram112 9y ago
I don't disagree with you for teams who know which technology is right and which isn't, for their specific use cases. But more common than not, inexperienced devs are using Mongo and similar to store relational data, simply because they were sold the 'MEAN' stack and didn't realize that, while it's easy to get a quick prototype running, a year or two later you eventually need things like transactions and joins, and NoSQL is absolutely the wrong technology most of the time.
qaq 9y ago
People tend to copycat what Google and the like are doing without giving much thought to the fact that in many cases the solutions they adapt are simply due to the fact that they don't have an alternative and not because it's "better".

fermuch 9y ago

I second this. Mongo clusters are easy to manage, and the aggregation pipeline or MapReduce engines do wonders on a sharded cluster with tons of data. That's the selling point of mongo for me.

nicholassmith 9y ago
That's interesting to me as I've been looking at Mongo aggregations for a solution to a problem but couldn't find any research on the performance of them.
ComputerGuru 9y ago
It doesn't matter how easy to is to scale if it doesn't do it right. You can win all the internet points when it comes to speed and ease-of-use but it doesn't matter if it comes at the cost of data integrity.
- Diederich 9y ago
  > It doesn't matter how easy to is to scale if it doesn't do it right. I would refer you to an earlier comment: > In general NoSQL solutions are optimized for certain use-cases at the detriment of others Your definition of 'right' is absolutely not the only definition of 'right'. More to the point: there are a lot of problem spaces where the data integrity provided by MongoDB are more than sufficient.
  - ComputerGuru 9y ago
    Sorry, I meant "correct" and not "right," as the former is objective and the latter can be (though often isn't) subjective. MongoDB is not correct; in fact, it is provably incorrect. If your needs to don't require correctness, then by all means.
orf 9y ago
> with tons of data Define tons of data. I'll bet a beer that what you say can fit on a single postgres instance and even be small enough to run fine on a cheapish developer laptop.

kod 9y ago

Citus works just fine.

qaq 9y ago

what % of people have workload beyond something that PG on i3.16xlarge can handle?

hendzen 9y ago
people who don't want to get woken up if Amazon decides to terminate said i3.16xlarge...
- jlarocco 9y ago
  Missed the point completely...
  - acdha 9y ago
    I think you should reconsider that dismissal: everyone needs n > 1 instances for reliability while increasingly few tasks require more {CPU,RAM,IOPs} than a single server can provide. That means that a growing percentage of problems will require clustering for reliability more than performance, and that favors the easiest to manage since in most cases every option will be fast enough.
- qaq 9y ago
  Not a fan of AWS or cloud in general but accepted that this the direction the world is going for now. The AWS instance type was purely for illustration purposes.
KallDrexx 9y ago
It's also about locality of your data. Having a global infrastructure means 150-200ms minimum latency per query if you have a system in India or Singapore with a database server in a US data center region. That adds up quick.
- qaq 9y ago
  That is orthogonal concern to what is being discussed if you run geo distributed Mongo cluster you will either have slow queries or will compromise on data integrity.

hiram112 9y ago

I don't disagree with you for teams who know which technology is right and which isn't, for their specific use cases. But more common than not, inexperienced devs are using Mongo and similar to store relational data, simply because they were sold the 'MEAN' stack and didn't realize that, while it's easy to get a quick prototype running, a year or two later you eventually need things like transactions and joins, and NoSQL is absolutely the wrong technology most of the time.

qaq 9y ago

People tend to copycat what Google and the like are doing without giving much thought to the fact that in many cases the solutions they adapt are simply due to the fact that they don't have an alternative and not because it's "better".