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Transactions are a pain point, but since WiredTiger supports them, I hope that MongoDB will eventually implement them - better sooner than later. That said, I s

Transactions are a pain point, but since WiredTiger supports them, I hope that MongoDB will eventually implement them - better sooner than later. That said, I still fail to see, why I should not use MongoDB. For me as a not to DB savvy developer it was easy to start developing and administrating, and I haven't had any major issues on a small sized production (replicated and sharded) cluster for 3 years now. http://source.wiredtiger.com/2.4.1/transactions.html http://source.wiredtiger.com/2.4.1/transactions.html

JonnieCache 12y ago
>For me as a not to DB savvy developer it was easy to start developing and administrating This point is repeatedly made about mongo, php and so on: to me it sounds like "This gun is so easy to use, it allows me to start spraying bullets around with no training and no knowledge of how it works!" or "This car is so simple I can go 150mph on the freeway the first time I got behind the wheel!" Databases are massively powerful systems and they are used almost exclusively for business applications and matters of import. Why is "I can use it to make long-term consequential actions without any idea wtf I'm doing!" a plus point?
- lafar6502 12y ago
  It's just a piece of software, a basic tool - not a war machine that requires 10 years of training, really no need to patronize. I'm really glad not only almighty Oracle admins can handle a database today
  - mhd 12y ago
    Right, because we all know there's just a huge void between "put it in in some kind of form, we'll get it out somehow" an "let's tweak the undocumented redo log retention policy to eke out the necessary performance for our massively joined manifested view that mostly consist of analytical functions". It's "basic" as in your data being your foundation, not in rudimentary. And to be fair, most of the things that aim to replace SQL tend to be about as complicated. TANSTAAFL.
    - lafar6502 12y ago
      You could buy lifelong supply of free lunches for the price of enterprise licence of a well known SQL database.
- vkjv 12y ago
  Because you can immediately switch your focus to things that add direct value your to your business.
- nemo44x 12y ago
  It allows you to get started amazingly fast and has great client support. You don't have to think much about the DB side of things - just throw data into it. It's also where people get into trouble. After they've done this and built their MVP they don't go back and rethink their data decisions. Then scale issues occur, among other things. But it's also very easy to change your schema while iterating to serve your use cases better. But it's up to the users to change things and to learn which types of patterns scale better and to actually learn how to use the database to their advantage after gaining some experience. Learning how to model documents effectively is rather important.
tjr 12y ago
It is easy to use. I've not reviewed v3 yet, but based on my experience with v2, my question remains, why would I select MongoDB over a relational database for (as they seem to be suggesting) any and all database applications? For some, sure, okay, maybe, but nearly everything I've done with databases falls quite nicely into a relational model, which doesn't seem to be MongoDB's strongest point.
- petilon 12y ago
  Relational databases are indeed excellent, and you are better off using a relational database if a single server can handle the load. But if you have more load than a single server can handle that's when you need things like MongoDB that support automatic sharding.
  - jsjohnst 12y ago
    So I guess you think Facebook/Tumblr/Google/Yahoo/etc use MongoDB for their databases (or worse, that they run it on a single server)?
    - tracker1 12y ago
      Realistically most websites could use a combination of caching with a single database server behind them. If the schema isn't too horrible. You can scale up a lot, and depending on your use case and revenue model, that's a valid plan. I'm pretty sure that Facebook is using a wide database (similar to Cassandra) with reverse indexes generated at the application layer. Yahoo, it depends on the developer group, but something like mongo in use wouldn't completely surprise me. Google has published a lot of white papers on how they use data (see Cassandra and Hadoop from some of those lessons). MongoDB is itself a bit of a bridge... replication setup is far easier than with a typical RDBMS, and you can break data into documents for simpler queries. Mongo as a persistent caching layer is also an option depending on your load and needs with SQL as authority, mongo for public search/display.
      - jsjohnst 12y ago

JonnieCache 12y ago

>For me as a not to DB savvy developer it was easy to start developing and administrating This point is repeatedly made about mongo, php and so on: to me it sounds like "This gun is so easy to use, it allows me to start spraying bullets around with no training and no knowledge of how it works!" or "This car is so simple I can go 150mph on the freeway the first time I got behind the wheel!" Databases are massively powerful systems and they are used almost exclusively for business applications and matters of import. Why is "I can use it to make long-term consequential actions without any idea wtf I'm doing!" a plus point?

lafar6502 12y ago
It's just a piece of software, a basic tool - not a war machine that requires 10 years of training, really no need to patronize. I'm really glad not only almighty Oracle admins can handle a database today
- mhd 12y ago
  Right, because we all know there's just a huge void between "put it in in some kind of form, we'll get it out somehow" an "let's tweak the undocumented redo log retention policy to eke out the necessary performance for our massively joined manifested view that mostly consist of analytical functions". It's "basic" as in your data being your foundation, not in rudimentary. And to be fair, most of the things that aim to replace SQL tend to be about as complicated. TANSTAAFL.
  - lafar6502 12y ago
    You could buy lifelong supply of free lunches for the price of enterprise licence of a well known SQL database.
vkjv 12y ago
Because you can immediately switch your focus to things that add direct value your to your business.
nemo44x 12y ago
It allows you to get started amazingly fast and has great client support. You don't have to think much about the DB side of things - just throw data into it. It's also where people get into trouble. After they've done this and built their MVP they don't go back and rethink their data decisions. Then scale issues occur, among other things. But it's also very easy to change your schema while iterating to serve your use cases better. But it's up to the users to change things and to learn which types of patterns scale better and to actually learn how to use the database to their advantage after gaining some experience. Learning how to model documents effectively is rather important.

tjr 12y ago

It is easy to use. I've not reviewed v3 yet, but based on my experience with v2, my question remains, why would I select MongoDB over a relational database for (as they seem to be suggesting) any and all database applications? For some, sure, okay, maybe, but nearly everything I've done with databases falls quite nicely into a relational model, which doesn't seem to be MongoDB's strongest point.

petilon 12y ago
Relational databases are indeed excellent, and you are better off using a relational database if a single server can handle the load. But if you have more load than a single server can handle that's when you need things like MongoDB that support automatic sharding.
- jsjohnst 12y ago
  So I guess you think Facebook/Tumblr/Google/Yahoo/etc use MongoDB for their databases (or worse, that they run it on a single server)?
  - tracker1 12y ago
    Realistically most websites could use a combination of caching with a single database server behind them. If the schema isn't too horrible. You can scale up a lot, and depending on your use case and revenue model, that's a valid plan. I'm pretty sure that Facebook is using a wide database (similar to Cassandra) with reverse indexes generated at the application layer. Yahoo, it depends on the developer group, but something like mongo in use wouldn't completely surprise me. Google has published a lot of white papers on how they use data (see Cassandra and Hadoop from some of those lessons). MongoDB is itself a bit of a bridge... replication setup is far easier than with a typical RDBMS, and you can break data into documents for simpler queries. Mongo as a persistent caching layer is also an option depending on your load and needs with SQL as authority, mongo for public search/display.
    - jsjohnst 12y ago