9 ms·

It was a thinly veiled bash on Mongo.

tptacek 15y ago
Is there a backstory to Mongo vs. Riak? I've noticed that there's definitely a "Mongo user" and a "Riak user" and they tend not to agree about stuff.
- ethangunderson 15y ago
  Basho has always had an issue with the way Mogno was architected and marketed, and they have no issue with letting people know. (several blog posts, killdashnine parties) I actually like both Mongo and Riak. I think they both solve a different problem set, and can actually complement each other in a polyglot persistence setup. It's a shame that there has to be so much negativity between them, because at the end of the day, this type of whiny blog post doesn't really help anyone.
  - batasrki 15y ago
    To be honest, Mongo's execs have done pretty much the same thing. As I said in another comment, the Changelog episode on Mongo was very illuminating with regards to the marketing tactics of 10gen. I do like both, as well.
    - ethangunderson 15y ago
      If they're doing the same thing, that's just as shitty. But I've been meaning to listen to that episode of the Changelog for awhile now, so thanks for the reminder!
    - mattyb 15y ago
      Is this the episode? http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongodb-nosql-and-web-scale-with-eliot-hor http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongod...
      - batasrki 15y ago
        Yep, that's the one
trustfundbaby 15y ago
I hate subliminal attacks like these ... if you have a problem with someone, come out and say it, don't let me have to figure out what or who you're getting at. And with regards to Mongo ... they've since added a feature that allows 'safe' writes to your database (confirms the data is written before returning a response) ... so what's the rant about?
- batasrki 15y ago
  The 'safe' feature isn't on by default, yet. Also, the benchmarks 10gen publishes are based on default setup, so basically, Mongo writes to RAM, therefore it's fast. I love Mongo and am using it in a few apps, but their marketing does blow, I admit. Also, Eliot Horowitz came out and bashed on Riak's eventual consistency promise by basically misleading devs into thinking that writing to MongoDB will always result in 'full consistency'. Listen to the ChangeLog episode on Mongo to hear that.
  - kchodorow 15y ago
    10gen doesn't publish any benchmarks. See http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Benchmarks http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Benchmarks for the official position. I transcribed the MongoDB vs. Riak part of the Changelog webcast (available at http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongodb-nosql-and-web-scale-with-eliot-hor http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongod...): ------------------------ Riak and all the dynamo-style databases are really distributed key/value stores and I think, you know, I've never used Riak in production, but I have no reason not to believe it's not a very good, highly scalable distributed key/value store. The difference between something like Riak and Mongo is that Mongo tries to solve a more generic problem. A couple of key points: one is consistency. Mongo is fully consistent, and all dynamo implementations are eventually consistent and for a lot of developers and a lot of applications, eventual consistency just is not an option. So I think for the default data store for a web site, you need something that's fully consistent. The other major difference is just data model and query-ability and being able to manipulate data. So for example with Mongo you can index on any fields you want, you can have compound indexes, you can sort, you know, all the same types of queries you do with a relational database work with Mongo. In addition, you can update individual fields, you can increment counters, you can do a lot of the same kinds of update operations you would do with a relational database. It maps much closer to a relational database than to a key/value store. Key/value stores are great if you've got billions of keys and you need to store them, they'll work very well, but if you need to replace a relational database with something that is pretty feature-comparable, they're not designed to do that. ----------------------- It starts at minute 17. edited: formatting.
ericflo 15y ago
Not just Mongo though, there are a lot of NoSQL companies out there right now whose marketing claims the impossible.
- sophacles 15y ago
  It's kind of sad too. There are lots of use cases where I want fast datastores, and you know what, if the database goes down, who cares? For example, I do lots of experiment logging to a mongodb. If the power goes out, and the data is lost who cares? The data was no longer valid or useful -- but if I slow down my writes for 'safety' I will be causing problems by introducing delay in ways that could cause conflict.

Is there a backstory to Mongo vs. Riak? I've noticed that there's definitely a "Mongo user" and a "Riak user" and they tend not to agree about stuff.

ethangunderson 15y ago
Basho has always had an issue with the way Mogno was architected and marketed, and they have no issue with letting people know. (several blog posts, killdashnine parties) I actually like both Mongo and Riak. I think they both solve a different problem set, and can actually complement each other in a polyglot persistence setup. It's a shame that there has to be so much negativity between them, because at the end of the day, this type of whiny blog post doesn't really help anyone.
- batasrki 15y ago
  To be honest, Mongo's execs have done pretty much the same thing. As I said in another comment, the Changelog episode on Mongo was very illuminating with regards to the marketing tactics of 10gen. I do like both, as well.
  - ethangunderson 15y ago
    If they're doing the same thing, that's just as shitty. But I've been meaning to listen to that episode of the Changelog for awhile now, so thanks for the reminder!
  - mattyb 15y ago
    Is this the episode? http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongodb-nosql-and-web-scale-with-eliot-hor http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongod...
    - batasrki 15y ago
      Yep, that's the one

trustfundbaby 15y ago

I hate subliminal attacks like these ... if you have a problem with someone, come out and say it, don't let me have to figure out what or who you're getting at. And with regards to Mongo ... they've since added a feature that allows 'safe' writes to your database (confirms the data is written before returning a response) ... so what's the rant about?

batasrki 15y ago
The 'safe' feature isn't on by default, yet. Also, the benchmarks 10gen publishes are based on default setup, so basically, Mongo writes to RAM, therefore it's fast. I love Mongo and am using it in a few apps, but their marketing does blow, I admit. Also, Eliot Horowitz came out and bashed on Riak's eventual consistency promise by basically misleading devs into thinking that writing to MongoDB will always result in 'full consistency'. Listen to the ChangeLog episode on Mongo to hear that.
- kchodorow 15y ago
  10gen doesn't publish any benchmarks. See http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Benchmarks http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Benchmarks for the official position. I transcribed the MongoDB vs. Riak part of the Changelog webcast (available at http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongodb-nosql-and-web-scale-with-eliot-hor http://thechangelog.com/post/3742814720/episode-0-5-1-mongod...): ------------------------ Riak and all the dynamo-style databases are really distributed key/value stores and I think, you know, I've never used Riak in production, but I have no reason not to believe it's not a very good, highly scalable distributed key/value store. The difference between something like Riak and Mongo is that Mongo tries to solve a more generic problem. A couple of key points: one is consistency. Mongo is fully consistent, and all dynamo implementations are eventually consistent and for a lot of developers and a lot of applications, eventual consistency just is not an option. So I think for the default data store for a web site, you need something that's fully consistent. The other major difference is just data model and query-ability and being able to manipulate data. So for example with Mongo you can index on any fields you want, you can have compound indexes, you can sort, you know, all the same types of queries you do with a relational database work with Mongo. In addition, you can update individual fields, you can increment counters, you can do a lot of the same kinds of update operations you would do with a relational database. It maps much closer to a relational database than to a key/value store. Key/value stores are great if you've got billions of keys and you need to store them, they'll work very well, but if you need to replace a relational database with something that is pretty feature-comparable, they're not designed to do that. ----------------------- It starts at minute 17. edited: formatting.

ericflo 15y ago

Not just Mongo though, there are a lot of NoSQL companies out there right now whose marketing claims the impossible.

sophacles 15y ago
It's kind of sad too. There are lots of use cases where I want fast datastores, and you know what, if the database goes down, who cares? For example, I do lots of experiment logging to a mongodb. If the power goes out, and the data is lost who cares? The data was no longer valid or useful -- but if I slow down my writes for 'safety' I will be causing problems by introducing delay in ways that could cause conflict.