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I don't understand why a schemaless database is so great for prototyping. Most of the pain from schema changes is when you have a lot of code or a lot of users

by cwyers 11y ago

I don't understand why a schemaless database is so great for prototyping. Most of the pain from schema changes is when you have a lot of code or a lot of users depending on an existing schema, so it's hard to change (or at least, hard to change while maintaining uptime). Running ALTER TABLE on a small dataset with almost no users is trivial.

toyg 11y ago
It might be trivial but it's another thing to do, which is is simply not there otherwise.
rdtsc 11y ago
Schemaless is just one aspect the other one is clustering/replication. Not sure about MongoDB but CouchDB has master-less peer to peer replication built in. That is hard to bolt-on later on top of Postgres and other databases. Just saying that is another factor in play, not just schema vs no-schema.
- cwyers 11y ago
  That's not really useful to prototyping.
  - rdtsc 11y ago
    Yes it is if you are prototyping a distributed service. Unless the belief is "if it works on my laptop, it will work distributed across 50 nodes as well" is something you believe in (you shouldn't... without very good reasons).
bsg75 11y ago
A lot of ALTER angst comes from MySQL where any table alter results in a full table lock and copy. In most other RDBMS, column addition and some type changes are a quick metadata change.
- jeremysmyth 11y ago
  Not all: https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index-overview.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/innodb-create-index-...