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10

I've got an app fully working with PostgreSql. After reading about Mongodb, I was interested to see how the app would work with it. After a few weeks, I migrated the whole system to Mongodb.

I like a few things with Mongodb. However, I found certain queries I was doing in PostgreSql, I couldn't do efficiently in Mongodb. Especially, when I had to join several tables to calculate some logic. For example, this.

Moreover, I am using Ruby on Rails 3, and an ODM called Mongoid. Mongoid is still in beta release. Documentation was good, but again, at times I found the ODM to be very limiting compared to what Active Record offered with traditional (SQL) database systems.

Even to this date, I feel more comfortable working with PostgreSql than Mongodb. Only because I can join tables and do anything with the data.

I've made two types of backups. One with PostgreSql and the other with Mongodb. Some say, some apps are more suitable with one or the other type of db. Should I continue with Mongodb and eventually hope for its RoR ODM (Mongoid) to fully mature, or should I consider using PostgreSql?

A few more questions: 1) Which one would be more suitable for developing a social networking site similar to Facebook. 2) Which one would be more suitable for 4-page standard layout type of website (Home, Products, About, Contact)

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Today, 2015's, with PostgreSQL 9.4 stable version with its JSON support, MongDB is not attractive: see benchmark and confirmations. See more info at @Jameel Grand answer – Peter Krauss May 17 at 4:29

5 Answers 5

up vote 48 down vote accepted

You dumped a decades-tested, fully featured RDBMS for a young, beta-quality, feature-thin document store with little community support. Unless you're already running tens of thousands of dollars a month in servers and think MongoDB was a better fit for the nature of your data, you probably wasted a lot of time for negative benefit. MongoDB is fun to toy with, and I've built a few apps using it myself for that reason, but it's almost never a better choice than Postgres/MySQL/SQL Server/etc. for production applications.

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9  
It's beta quality and the list of deployments is misleading. Most of those companies listed have used MongoDB for one side project, they aren't running their main services on it. Read the comments next to each company name -- one used it to track a single web form, another used it for an internal reporting application, etc. One of the few that actually uses MongoDB for their main service is Foursquare, and that came back to bite them with days of downtime which would not have occurred if they were using a RDBMS. – Dan Grossman Dec 13 '10 at 23:26
1  
Thanks for getting back Dan. Reading more into the list of deployments. It was indeed, misleading. Most of them integrate MongoDB partially and not fully.. For what reason though? Having two types of DB's, doesn't that only create more effort on the job? Second, my app seems to be working without any huge problems running on MongoDB. Still on development stage though. Haven't run any tests in production. Should I think about making the switch back to an RDBMS before I come across bigger problems in the future with MongoDB, given that is still new and all? – Christian Fazzini Dec 14 '10 at 15:11
7  
Why do they do it? The same reason you do (and the same reason I did). Some young developer at the company likes to keep up with the latest-and-greatest trends, read all the NoSQL noise in past months and got excited, so decided to try it out in some new project. – Dan Grossman Dec 14 '10 at 22:21
3  
After 1.5 year, do you still think that it's not ready for use in production? – Chan Le May 28 '12 at 18:27
2  
@ChanLe Yes. Most high-profile MongoDB users of 1.5 years ago are no longer using it. It's still just as young and beta-quality, but now everyone knows it. – Dan Grossman May 30 '12 at 16:22
up vote 12 down vote

Let's quote what you wrote and see what it tells us:

"I like a few things with Mongodb. However, I found certain queries I was
 doing in PostgreSql, I couldn't do efficiently in Mongodb. Especially,
 when I had to join several tables to calculate some logic."

"I found the ODM to be very limiting compared to what Active Record offered
 with traditional (SQL) database systems."

"I feel more comfortable working with PostgreSql than Mongodb. Only because
 I can join tables and do anything with the data."

Based on what you've said it looks to me like you should stick with PostgreSQL. Keep an eye on MongoDB and use it if and when it's appropriate. But given what you've said it sounds like PG is a better fit for you at present.

Share and enjoy.

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up vote 2 down vote

I haven't used MongoDB yet, and may never get round to it as I haven't found anything I can't do with Postgres, but just to quote the PostgreSQL 9.2 release notes:

With PostgreSQL 9.2, query results can be returned as JSON data types. Combined with the new PL/V8 Javascript and PL/Coffee database programming extensions, and the optional HStore key-value store, users can now utilize PostgreSQL like a "NoSQL" document database, while retaining PostgreSQL's reliability, flexibility and performance.

So looks like in new versions of Postgres you can have the best of both worlds. I haven't used this yet either but as a bit of a fan of PostgreSQL (excellent docs / mailing lists) I wouldn't hesitate using it for almost anything RDBMS related.

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up vote 1 down vote

We also have research on the same that which is better. PostGres or MongoDb. but with all facts and figures in hand, we found that PostGres is far better to use than MongoDb. in MongoDb, beside eats up memory and CPU, it also occupies large amount of disk space. It's increasing 2x size of disk on certain interval.

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up vote 1 down vote

First of all postgres is an RDBMS and MongoDB is NoSQL .
but Stand-alone NoSQL technologies do not meet ACID standards because they sacrifice critical data protections in favor of high throughput performance for unstructured applications.

Postgres 9.4 providing NoSQL capabilities along with full transaction support, storing JSON documents with constraints on the fields data.

so you will get all advantages from both RDBMS and NoSQL

check it out for detailed article http://www.aptuz.com/blog/is-postgres-nosql-database-better-than-mongodb/

To experience Postgres' NoSQL performance for yourself. Download the pg_nosql_benchmark at GitHub. here is the link https://github.com/EnterpriseDB/pg_nosql_benchmark

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