Join the Stack Overflow Community
Stack Overflow is a community of 6.7 million programmers, just like you, helping each other.
Join them; it only takes a minute:
Sign up
up vote 27 down vote favorite
5

I'm building a nodejs application and am utterly torn between nosql mongodb vs rmds PostregresSql. My project is to create a open source example project for logging visitors and displaying visitor statistics in real time on a webpage using nodejs. I was planning on using mongodb at first, because lot of nodejs examples and tutorials, albiet mostly older ones, used it and paas hosters with a free teir are abounding. However, I was seeing a lot of bashing on mongodb recently and found that people who tried to use mongodb ended up switching to postgres. http://blog.engineering.kiip.me/post/20988881092/a-year-with-mongodb http://dieswaytoofast.blogspot.com/2012/09/mysql-vs-postgres-vs-mongodb.html http://www.plotprojects.com/why-we-use-postgresql-and-slick/ I also a fan of heroku and have heard a lot about postgress becuase of that and find that sql queries can be nice sometimes.

I'm not a database expert, so I can't tell for the life of me which way to go. I would really apreaciate it if you could give some advice on which one to consider and why.

I have a few criteria:

  1. Since I want this to be a example, it would be nice to have a way to host a decently sized amount of data. I know that mongodb defiantly offers this, but postgres paas like heroku seem to have pretty small databases(since I am logging every visitor to the website)

  2. A database that is simplistic and easy to explain to others.

  3. Performance doesn't really matter, but speed can't hurt

Thanks for all of the help!

Note: Please no flame wars, everyone has their own opinion :)

share|improve this question

closed as primarily opinion-based by WiredPrairie, mu is too short, Joe, Trevor Dixon, Peter Lyons Sep 13 '13 at 2:40

Many good questions generate some degree of opinion based on expert experience, but answers to this question will tend to be almost entirely based on opinions, rather than facts, references, or specific expertise.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
9  
I don't understand why people vote down on this question. – Nam Nguyen Nov 15 '13 at 5:44
5  
I don't understand how this question was closed as "primarily opinion-based". This kind of question - when to use SQL and when to use NoSQL - is the substance of computer science and architectural decisions. – Oliver Moran Sep 24 '14 at 8:17
    
There is some good analysis by Cory House in his post called, "Why I’m Not Sold on MongoDB". Note especially the part on Schema = Protection. bitnative.com/2015/04/13/why-im-not-sold-on-mongodb – mg1075 Jan 29 '16 at 17:55
    
And for an interesting PostgreSQL, Express, Angular, Node boilerplate project, check out this project based on the MEAN.JS boilerplate. github.com/StetSolutions/pean – mg1075 Jan 29 '16 at 17:56
up vote 18 down vote accepted

Choosing between an SQL database and a NoSQL database is certainly being debated heavily right now and there are plenty of good articles on the subject. I'll list a couple at the end. I have no problem recommending SQL over NOSQL for your particular needs.

NoSQL has a niche group of use cases where data is stored in large tightly coupled packages called documents rather than in a relational model. In a nutshell, data that is tightly coupled to a single entity (like all the text documents used by a single user) is better stored in a NoSQL document model. Data that behaves like excel spreadsheets and fits nicely in rows and is subject to aggregate calculations is better stored in a SQL database of which postgresql is only one of several good choices.

A third option that you might consider is redis (http://redis.io/) which is a simple key value data store that is extremely fast when querying like SQL but not as rigidly typed.

The example you cite seems to be a straightforward row/column type problem. You will find the SQL syntax is much less arcane than the query syntax for MongoDB. Node has many things to recommend it and the toolset has matured significantly in the past year. I would recommend using the monogoose npm package as it reduces the amount of boilerplate code that is required with native mongodb and I have not noticed any performance degradation.

http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/sql-vs-nosql-which-is-better/

http://www.infoivy.com/2013/07/nosql-database-comparison-chart-only.html

share|improve this answer
    
I will definitely take a look at redis. – joshua-anderson Sep 13 '13 at 1:21
    
Java server environments are problematic. Node.JS is way more stable. – dman Jan 16 '14 at 5:48
    
My answer wasn't aimed at knocking Node. I use Node, Java and now Dart in production environments and all have their strengths. When I looked at the OP's profile he seemed to have a background in more traditional server environments and I wanted to point out that the Node toolset was not as feature rich as they might be thinking. This is is becoming less of an issue today as node-inspector and some of editing add-ons have really improved. – Nathaniel Johnson Jan 16 '14 at 14:17

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.