5 ms·

The fact that Stripe ever used MongoDB is dubious enough, but that they've endured on it well past the fad's expiry is reason enough for me to avoid doing busin

The fact that Stripe ever used MongoDB is dubious enough, but that they've endured on it well past the fad's expiry is reason enough for me to avoid doing business with them in the future. Handling money is serious business and if one insists on using the unproven flavor-of-the-week to do so, they'd better make sure it has at least the fundamental requirements to accomplish its task, e.g., transactions/MVCC. Stripe apparently failed to do so, and has chosen to propagate that failure for many years. One can make excuses for the spunky startup with a handful of employees needing to save time by using what they know or whatever, but Stripe is well past that point, and serious people should've taken over by now. I'd expect "replace Mongo with a real database" to be near the top of the todo list for any serious people.

nkohari 7y ago
Transactions aren't the only solution for that problem space, and using them can introduce other (likely even harder-to-solve) problems with distributed systems.
danpalmer 7y ago
FWIW, having worked with the Stripe API for ~5 years and put all our sales through them for the lifetime of the business, I wouldn’t have guessed they used MongoDB. The API is mostly excellent, and it has always presented a consistent view of the world to our side. The same cannot he said for a number of other services we use, including those from some companies with supposedly very good tech credentials. We’ve had to back out of integrations due to the clear evidence that they are non transactional and/or eventually consistent.
- benologist 7y ago
  You couldn't tell what backend they use just from their API unless there's some errant exceptions leaking information. Their test API might give us some clues. It can only purge your data one record at a time, at about 1.5 records a second, and locks your API credentials for however long it takes to crash or finish iterating through each object. I don't know what storage engine would have that constraint but they've stuck with it for years and simulate a fast test API with a whole other piece of software instead of just having a fast test API. What storage options don't have the ability to delete all your records at once quickly? If it was MongoDB there would surely be an index attaching the data to your account. Same with PostgreSQL.
  - throwaway9980 7y ago
    I’ve worked with Stripe enough to have a hunch that it was Mongo. Never really thought much about it until it was confirmed here just now. There’s a lot of immutability in their system, tons of it makes sense but some of it smells of a weak data store.
  - Rapzid 7y ago
    You can make all those mistakes with a traditional RDBMS. Iterating over objects to delete them one at a time with database round trips is also a common mistake people make with ORMs(along with many other things that could have been done in one statement).
wbronitsky 7y ago
You are laying down some hefty assumptions here and I'm not sure they are fair. You seem to indicate that Stripe has consistency issues with their payment APIs. Have you seen this? Having worked directly on these APIs (note, I said ON and not WITH, I worked at Stripe on these products), it would greatly surprise me to see non-trivial consistency issues with their data model that surrounds money movement. Stripe might be on Mongo, but assuming that they have consistency issues because of that is quite a leap. Remember, Stripe is regulated federally and in most states, as well as in their international jurisdictions, so the claim you are making would be one regulators might be interested in if there is any veracity. You also seem to be insisting that there are no "serious people" at Stripe, and that might be true! At least, I hope no one has mistaken me for a "serious person". But what does "serious" mean here and why can only "serious people" work on financial infrastructure? Moreover, why do "serious people" not see Mongo as a "real database"? In fact, what is a "real database" to you, other than something that has transactions? I'm very interested in your answer here; while I had my issues with Mongo in my 2.5 years at Stripe, most of the issues I encountered I would lump into the "this is a trade-off consequence" bucket, as Mongo solved a whole lot of other issues for me. The other main bucket I would have used was "distributed database problem". I know Stripe had no plans, nor should they, to move to a non-distributed data store. No one is forcing you to use Stripe, but I would suggest that attacking Stripe for their technology usage is not very useful.
- DenisM 7y ago
  > what is a "real database" to you, other than something that has transactions? How about "Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability"? That would be a good start for a database. A nearby comment suggests lack of set-based operations (e.g. delete), so that would be another nice thing to add.
yawboakye 7y ago
> Handling money is serious business How do you say this without knowing that governments around the world feel the same way and so heavily regulate this space? Do you know any publicly available recommendation from these regulators against MongoDB? > replace Mongo with a real database to be near the top of the todo list This is where the businesses separate themselves from technology enthusiasts. Let's assume this is made the top priority, in your opinion, what task immediately follows? Or what former priority does it replace?
- cookiecaper 7y ago
  > Do you know any publicly available recommendation from these regulators against MongoDB? If there isn't one, there should be. >Let's assume this is made the top priority, in your opinion, what task immediately follows? Or what former priority does it replace? Mongo jeopardizes the overall security and reliability of the system, thus exposing Stripe to serious liability, so I'd say replacing it is part of the basic expectation from any production-level computer system. Obviously I don't have a copy of "Important Stripe Person's Priority List", but I'd assume such basic functionality is part of an implicitly-assumed functional baseline, and that Stripe would expect said important people to escalate and develop a plan to handle such a fundamental flaw ASAP. If we were just tracking people's favorite cat videos or something, it'd be one thing. Attacks targeting malicious data modification and exploitation of races wouldn't really be that much of a concern. It's not great to have that attack surface but not necessarily the end of the world if someone's favorite cat videos get added to their account 1000 times. But when we're dealing with money, this kind of thing needs to be taken seriously, and tacking on a big pile of crap in front of the datastore is not a serious way to address its fundamental shortcomings, at least not when there are many better, proven options on the market. Just in case someone thinks I'm being an alarmist here, this has already happened; multiple bitcoin exchanges have been pwned due to their reliance on Mongo's flawed semantics. [1] I can only assume that systems like Stripe haven't been attacked similarly because it would provoke the ire of much bigger fish, and why do that when you can knock over smaller bitcoin exchanges? [1] http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/04/06/another-one-bites-the-dust-flexcoin/ http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/04/06/another-one-bites-t...
twic 7y ago
> The fact that Stripe ever used MongoDB is dubious enough, but that they've endured on it well past the fad's expiry is reason enough for me to avoid doing business with them in the future. Just wait until you find out what technology actual banks use!
- cookiecaper 7y ago
  COBOL, Fortran, mainframes, and other 70s-era tech are much more trustworthy than new-fangled VC landgrabs like MongoDB. As long as the banks haven't transitioned everything to Cassandra or whatever, I don't think we'll have an issue there.

nkohari 7y ago

Transactions aren't the only solution for that problem space, and using them can introduce other (likely even harder-to-solve) problems with distributed systems.

danpalmer 7y ago

FWIW, having worked with the Stripe API for ~5 years and put all our sales through them for the lifetime of the business, I wouldn’t have guessed they used MongoDB. The API is mostly excellent, and it has always presented a consistent view of the world to our side. The same cannot he said for a number of other services we use, including those from some companies with supposedly very good tech credentials. We’ve had to back out of integrations due to the clear evidence that they are non transactional and/or eventually consistent.

benologist 7y ago
You couldn't tell what backend they use just from their API unless there's some errant exceptions leaking information. Their test API might give us some clues. It can only purge your data one record at a time, at about 1.5 records a second, and locks your API credentials for however long it takes to crash or finish iterating through each object. I don't know what storage engine would have that constraint but they've stuck with it for years and simulate a fast test API with a whole other piece of software instead of just having a fast test API. What storage options don't have the ability to delete all your records at once quickly? If it was MongoDB there would surely be an index attaching the data to your account. Same with PostgreSQL.
- throwaway9980 7y ago
  I’ve worked with Stripe enough to have a hunch that it was Mongo. Never really thought much about it until it was confirmed here just now. There’s a lot of immutability in their system, tons of it makes sense but some of it smells of a weak data store.
- Rapzid 7y ago
  You can make all those mistakes with a traditional RDBMS. Iterating over objects to delete them one at a time with database round trips is also a common mistake people make with ORMs(along with many other things that could have been done in one statement).

wbronitsky 7y ago

You are laying down some hefty assumptions here and I'm not sure they are fair. You seem to indicate that Stripe has consistency issues with their payment APIs. Have you seen this? Having worked directly on these APIs (note, I said ON and not WITH, I worked at Stripe on these products), it would greatly surprise me to see non-trivial consistency issues with their data model that surrounds money movement. Stripe might be on Mongo, but assuming that they have consistency issues because of that is quite a leap. Remember, Stripe is regulated federally and in most states, as well as in their international jurisdictions, so the claim you are making would be one regulators might be interested in if there is any veracity. You also seem to be insisting that there are no "serious people" at Stripe, and that might be true! At least, I hope no one has mistaken me for a "serious person". But what does "serious" mean here and why can only "serious people" work on financial infrastructure? Moreover, why do "serious people" not see Mongo as a "real database"? In fact, what is a "real database" to you, other than something that has transactions? I'm very interested in your answer here; while I had my issues with Mongo in my 2.5 years at Stripe, most of the issues I encountered I would lump into the "this is a trade-off consequence" bucket, as Mongo solved a whole lot of other issues for me. The other main bucket I would have used was "distributed database problem". I know Stripe had no plans, nor should they, to move to a non-distributed data store. No one is forcing you to use Stripe, but I would suggest that attacking Stripe for their technology usage is not very useful.

DenisM 7y ago
> what is a "real database" to you, other than something that has transactions? How about "Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability"? That would be a good start for a database. A nearby comment suggests lack of set-based operations (e.g. delete), so that would be another nice thing to add.

yawboakye 7y ago

> Handling money is serious business How do you say this without knowing that governments around the world feel the same way and so heavily regulate this space? Do you know any publicly available recommendation from these regulators against MongoDB? > replace Mongo with a real database to be near the top of the todo list This is where the businesses separate themselves from technology enthusiasts. Let's assume this is made the top priority, in your opinion, what task immediately follows? Or what former priority does it replace?

cookiecaper 7y ago
> Do you know any publicly available recommendation from these regulators against MongoDB? If there isn't one, there should be. >Let's assume this is made the top priority, in your opinion, what task immediately follows? Or what former priority does it replace? Mongo jeopardizes the overall security and reliability of the system, thus exposing Stripe to serious liability, so I'd say replacing it is part of the basic expectation from any production-level computer system. Obviously I don't have a copy of "Important Stripe Person's Priority List", but I'd assume such basic functionality is part of an implicitly-assumed functional baseline, and that Stripe would expect said important people to escalate and develop a plan to handle such a fundamental flaw ASAP. If we were just tracking people's favorite cat videos or something, it'd be one thing. Attacks targeting malicious data modification and exploitation of races wouldn't really be that much of a concern. It's not great to have that attack surface but not necessarily the end of the world if someone's favorite cat videos get added to their account 1000 times. But when we're dealing with money, this kind of thing needs to be taken seriously, and tacking on a big pile of crap in front of the datastore is not a serious way to address its fundamental shortcomings, at least not when there are many better, proven options on the market. Just in case someone thinks I'm being an alarmist here, this has already happened; multiple bitcoin exchanges have been pwned due to their reliance on Mongo's flawed semantics. [1] I can only assume that systems like Stripe haven't been attacked similarly because it would provoke the ire of much bigger fish, and why do that when you can knock over smaller bitcoin exchanges? [1] http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/04/06/another-one-bites-the-dust-flexcoin/ http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/04/06/another-one-bites-t...

twic 7y ago

> The fact that Stripe ever used MongoDB is dubious enough, but that they've endured on it well past the fad's expiry is reason enough for me to avoid doing business with them in the future. Just wait until you find out what technology actual banks use!

cookiecaper 7y ago
COBOL, Fortran, mainframes, and other 70s-era tech are much more trustworthy than new-fangled VC landgrabs like MongoDB. As long as the banks haven't transitioned everything to Cassandra or whatever, I don't think we'll have an issue there.