

A New Perspective on MongoDB - meghan
http://dirolf.com/2011/03/28/new-perspective-on-mongodb.html

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waxman
I've found MongoDB to be the perfect datastore for early-stage startups (which
are presumably evolving rapidly) for exactly the reasons Mike mentions:

\- it's super _flexible_ (and schema-less)

\- dynamic queries are _fast_ and powerful

\- it's very _easy_ work with

Scalability is another issue, _but_ I think Mongo _can_ scale (and that's
slowly and bravely being proven by Foursquare). And almost all startups need
to drastically re-architect their datastores when they hit massive scale
anyways, so why not start out with the easiest and most flexible option that
will let you iterate the fastest?

~~~
spyrosk
What about data persistence? Is it still enforced only through replication?

I really liked MongoDB's philosophy but this was the show stopper for me when
I was exploring it. At least for some services I need to be certain that if
the DB says it stored some data that really stored and not kept in volatile
memory until it decides it's the right time to write them to disk.

It's been a while since I looked at it though, and that may no longer be the
case. Are there any improvements in this area?

~~~
mdirolf
1.8 has single server durability, but TBH I haven't had a chance to check it
out in depth yet.

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PaulHoule
I've looked at mongodb for one particular application and it's currently
uneconomic for my particular situation on Amazon EC2.

I've got a lot of data but a relatively light workload. One m1.large w/ mysql
handles the workload easily, to fit two copies of everything in RAM with mongo
I estimate I'd be paying four times as much.

Now, if I had more traffic, there's a crossover where mongodb is probably
cheaper but the system I've got ought to scale affordably to the point where
I'll have enough money for the next thing if I need it.

