[HN Gopher] MangoDB: An open-source MongoDB alternative
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MangoDB: An open-source MongoDB alternative
Author : folex
Score : 154 points
Date : 2021-11-01 19:19 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.mangodb.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.mangodb.io)
| d--b wrote:
| Really they should call this "PongoDB", it's less similar than
| mango and it's got a hint that this is backed by pg...
| simondotau wrote:
| Or MongresDB.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| Keep ideas coming I'm not sure MongoDB Lawyers will allow this
| name to be used
| blondin wrote:
| really? they won't?
|
| ah man, mangodb is a really awesome name. vastly better than
| mongodb if you ask me.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| Yes. Mango is better than Mongo! could be project tagline
| :)
| yuchi wrote:
| Unfortunately "pongo" is a commercial name of a product here in
| Italy (similar to playdoh)
| CactusOnFire wrote:
| I don't trust developers who can't come up with a more creative,
| less confusing name.
|
| Like, you can at least name it after another variant of Mango to
| make the name more interesting, or call it something similar but
| with a little more variation (like MangroveDB)
| Rochus wrote:
| Still better than a name with which you have to explain to
| everyone what it actually is supposed to mean and that it is
| not meant as an insult (even if that is the first thing that
| comes to everyone's mind).
| [deleted]
| michaelpb wrote:
| GIMP?
|
| If that's what you're referring to, then yup #1 worst-named
| FOSS ever.
| detaro wrote:
| "Mongo" is a pretty bad slur for people with Down syndrome.
| michaelpb wrote:
| Oh wow, I had no idea! I've never heard of this. Thanks
| for letting me know.
|
| I only knew it as the name of "Planet Mongo", the main
| planet in the Flash Gordon universe, an old science
| fiction comic that has been rebooted many times (which
| also had loads of extremely racist anti-Chinese elements)
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| I've never heard that, though I've heard the racist
| "loid" version.
|
| Though I do love the dictionary definition of "mongo":
|
| "Items found in the trash that can be salvaged."
|
| Sums up my views of mongodb pretty well, actually.
| slantyyz wrote:
| And the version of the slur you're talking about is a
| pretty old one that I have not heard used in decades (of
| course that may be regional, generational, etc.)
|
| But like you, I have never heard "mongo" used in the same
| pejorative context.
| skinkestek wrote:
| It is a very common slur among kids in Norway and
| originally means someone who has the "mongoloid"
| syndrome. These days it just means "you idiot" after "pro
| choice" succeeded where Hitler "failed" and got rid of
| most people with downs syndrome.
| account-5 wrote:
| Hilter was targeting people with downs syndrome? I
| thought it was Jews and Russians.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| voidfunc wrote:
| I thought it was a jab at Cockroach DB
| michaelpb wrote:
| Could be that! Another terrible name hahah. Although in
| their defense I get the "cockroach" analogy, while "gimp"
| is just an offensive insult and/or a very NSFW BDSM term,
| and has no other meaning, which makes conversations even
| more awkward.
| mindcrime wrote:
| I'm still waiting for somebody to launch _MondoDB_ , hopefully
| with the tagline "The Radical Database!"
|
| And of course the query language for this database would be
| GNARLY - Guided Natural Accurate Realtime Lookup Yahoo
|
| The wire protocol should be SENDIT - Synthetic Electronic Node
| Dialogue Interopability Transport
| nhoughto wrote:
| Recently went deeep on efficient kv storage in postgres, there is
| an order of magnitude different in storage size between different
| approaches (naive skinny table, EAV, array values, mapped generic
| columns etc).
|
| I wonder what approach this project takes, I'll have to poke
| around!
| nhoughto wrote:
| Ah yeah it's probably jsonb (duh). That's not efficient, but
| sometimes you don't care about that!
| jitl wrote:
| Can you share some more about your learnings? I'm familiar with
| EAV as a concept but not the performance implications of EAV vs
| jsonb. Googling "mapped generic columns" didn't turn up
| anything that seemed relevant, and I'm curious what you mean
| specifically by "array values" as a solution in this space.
| [deleted]
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| This is f*cking awesome!
| xiaodai wrote:
| But isn't mongodb open source anyway?
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| Historically mongodb uses AGPL. A while ago they changed the
| license to their own SSPL, which does not satisfy the OSI open
| source nor the FSF free software definitions, in order to
| prevent cloud providers from offering managed mongodb offerings
| which would compete with mongodb atlas.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| What's the primary use case for this? I'd imagine it's pretty
| difficult to scale. How would it compare to something like FDB's
| document layer (which supports most of Mongo's wire protocol)?
| https://foundationdb.github.io/fdb-document-layer/known-diff...
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Would it be hard to support MySQL as well?
| oofbey wrote:
| Probably. IIRC postgresql has better support for looking inside
| JSON documents than mysql does. Storing, searching,
| manipulating JSON is what mongodb is all about.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| I would imagine the hardest thing is interpreting MongoDB
| Protocol and converting to SQL - specific backend support like
| MySQL or might be go straight to Vitess to support sharding
| might be possible. Thought I think PostgreSQL is perfect
| database to get started
| mmdoda wrote:
| Is MongoDB not open-source?
| ofrzeta wrote:
| That demo repo https://github.com/MangoDB-io/example is forked
| from https://github.com/mariadb-corporation/dev-example-nosql-
| lis... which "allows a MariaDB server or cluster to be used as
| the backend of an application using a MongoDB client library".
|
| So in other words the MangoDB project tries to port a MariaDB
| NoSQL example app to PostgreSQL.
|
| EDIT: seems I mis-interpreted the Github repo. The example is
| indeed a fork of the MariaDB project but the underlying MangoDB
| is not.
| flushot wrote:
| When I hear of "MangoDB", I remember this:
| https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb
|
| Funny how there's an actual project with the same name.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| MariaDB built fantastic simple MongoDB demo application which
| MangoDB reused. MariaDB's "NoSQL Listener" is part of MaxScale
| which is not Open Source.
| chx wrote:
| Let's make bets on how long it takes before the C&D hammer comes
| down hard on them.
|
| > Trademark infringement is the unauthorized use of a trademark
| or service mark on or in connection with goods and/or services in
| a manner that is _likely to cause confusion_ , deception, or
| mistake about the source of the goods and/or services.
|
| Emphasis mine, source https://www.uspto.gov/page/about-trademark-
| infringement
|
| https://trademarks.justia.com/860/49/mongodb-86049805.html
|
| I wouldn't rule it out they will simply dispute the domain name
| https://my.nic.io/legal/legal_dispute.html
|
| > by using the domain name, you have intentionally attempted to
| attract, for commercial gain, Internet users to your web site or
| other online location, by creating a likelihood of confusion with
| the complainant's mark
| av8avenger wrote:
| This was actually my first thought even before continuing
| reading what they do.
|
| I think they'll hear from lawyers sooner than later, if this
| gathers more attention...
| Aeolun wrote:
| I doubt anyone will confuse Mango's and Mongo's. It's clearly
| satire, even if it's a real project.
| bchammer wrote:
| also possible with Oracle
|
| https://blogs.oracle.com/database/post/introducing-oracle-da...
| chrischen wrote:
| FoundationDB document layer works on the same way.
| rectang wrote:
| "MangoDB"? Clearly that's trademark infringement.
| throwaway20371 wrote:
| I guess not if they're based in Estonia?
| threeseed wrote:
| Estonia is a member country of the European Union which has
| well established IP laws.
|
| The chance of them being successfully sued for this is ~100%.
| james_in_the_uk wrote:
| I agree with your point, but (pedant mode on) a cease and
| desist would be more likely in the first instance. You'd
| only sue first in an exceptional case.
| rectang wrote:
| Whether or not legal redress is practical is a separate
| question. But MangoDB is obviously creating "confusion in the
| marketplace" and sponging off the goodwill created by
| somebody else. That's not cool whether it's a commercial
| entity abusing a FOSS trademark, or the other way around as
| in this case.
| evv wrote:
| How many fruit-related names are available, anyways? There
| would surely be a different lawsuit coming their way if
| they named it AppleDB. (ok, I admit this is a terrible
| joke)
|
| If "Mango" can get away with it, I think it is very cool to
| provide a graceful path to open source tech.
|
| I don't have much pity for the $33B company that promotes
| its mediocre semi-proprietary database to unsuspecting
| devs/students who don't know better.
| rectang wrote:
| It is important to be consistent in the application of
| the rules. Some of us made a stink about the "Commons
| Clause" people abusing the ASF's trademark when they were
| promoting "Apache License 2.0 with Commons Clause" for
| something incompatible with the Apache License. It would
| be hypocritical to apply trademark rules for that but not
| in the case of "MangoDB".
| evv wrote:
| Fundamentally I do agree with you. (especially with the
| mention of "Apache License 2.0 with Commons Clause",
| which was giving me a headache this morning)
|
| But also I'm not lifting a finger to help companies like
| MongoDB, unless properly compensated.
|
| Personally I hope that MongoDB does go for a trademark
| lawsuit, triggering the Streisand Effect. Then Mango can
| find a better name and attract attention.
| tssva wrote:
| "and sponging off the goodwill created by somebody else."
|
| Aren't they sponging off the ill will created by somebody
| else?
| gizdan wrote:
| And the other day there was a project that allowed to use MS SQL
| wire protocol on PostgreSQL, so my question is:
|
| Are we just gonna implement everything on top of PostreSQL?
| iKnowKungFoo wrote:
| It's PostreSQL all the way down.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Apart from the fact that this project is a spin-off of a
| MariaDB NoSQL example app.
|
| EDIT: I was wrong about this.
| aleksi wrote:
| I think you confuse an example with the proxy itself:
| https://github.com/MangoDB-io/MangoDB
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Oh, I see, you are right. Misunderstanding on my part.
| _jal wrote:
| Anxiously awaiting the first FPS engine built out of sprocs and
| views.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| yes
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Solid, boring tech as foundations for abstractions is a logical
| approach to system architecture.
| handrous wrote:
| > Are we just gonna implement everything on top of PostreSQL?
|
| On top of PostgreSQL? Which project keeps incorporating other
| database paradigms at a good clip, and includes a Foreign Data
| Wrapper feature?
|
| Yeah, looks like it.
| munk-a wrote:
| It makes me quite happy. I love working in Postgres' dialect
| and would happily port applications from other dialects to
| postgres chunk by chunk as stuff broke.
| brian_herman wrote:
| Yes, PostreSQL is like the javascript of databases.
| mrweasel wrote:
| Expect without all the data type issues and Postgresql having
| a sane design, Postgresql be a pleasure to use and having the
| courtesy of staying out of my browser.... Please don't tell
| me that someone compiled Postgresql to WASM.
| tkzed49 wrote:
| you might want to sit down for this one, but we're pretty
| close (sqlite):
|
| https://jlongster.com/future-sql-web
| munk-a wrote:
| > Please don't tell me that someone compiled Postgresql to
| WASM.
|
| I don't believe that nobody has ever done this... And
| google delivers: https://github.com/wasmerio/wasmer-
| postgres
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Unfortunately, that is WASM on postgres, not postgres on
| WASM: https://medium.com/wasmer/announcing-the-first-
| postgres-exte...
| [deleted]
| visualphoenix wrote:
| Reminds me of other abandon things I've seen in this space before
| over the years like torodb[0] and pgmongo[1].
|
| Peeking at this implementation, it seems very immature. There is
| a long road ahead. Good luck!
|
| I always suspected this space never matured because the effort to
| rewrite a mongo app to use postgres was less than providing a
| drop in mongo translation layer.
|
| Though I've never used mongo, I've always presupposed the set of
| people who pick mongo is a mutually exclusive from the set of
| people that pick Postgres. Perhaps this is proof of set
| intersection?
|
| [0] https://github.com/torodb/server
|
| [1] https://github.com/thomas4019/pgmongo
| joshhart wrote:
| Nobody remembers the MangoDB spoof where they made fun of mongodb
| reliability by writing to /dev/null ?
| https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb
|
| If this project is real they chose the worst name possible.
| throwaway20371 wrote:
| "MangoDB is a proxy which uses PostgreSQL as a backend. The proxy
| translates MongoDB wire protocol commands into SQL queries, and
| use PostgreSQL as storage."
|
| You don't have to support MongoDB, but you can support apps that
| were only written with Mongo as backend? That's _awesome_. I can
| 't imagine it's production-ready yet but it's a great idea.
| taf2 wrote:
| Didn't the stripe team do something like this 5 or 10 years
| ago? I seem to remember them having a translation layer or
| doing some sort of streaming conversion from mongodb to pg?
|
| Ah yes - https://github.com/stripe-archive/mosql
|
| 6 years ago
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| Does not look like the same thing - this looks like system to
| replicate from MongoDB rather than being able to talk to
| PostgreSQL as if it were MongoDB
| christkv wrote:
| There was another thing in that space aswell
| https://www.torodb.com
| michaelpb wrote:
| Yeah, I could imagine this being a useful step to migrate away
| from MongoDB. I suspect there are plenty of "resume-driven
| development" MongoDB installations out there that could use
| something like this.
| threeseed wrote:
| MongoDB is a 12 year old database. And yet people are still
| using this disparaging argument that anyone that chooses it
| is doing so for their resume and not because it meets their
| needs in any way.
|
| But by all means replace your production system with MangoDB
| which is unsupported, significantly slower, has no built-in
| HA/clustering and written in Go which is a GC language.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| Note MangoDB is a stateless proxy as such you can use it
| with any PostgreSQL setup. For example you should be able
| to use it with Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL as backend which
| has HA built in
| threeseed wrote:
| If you are using the cloud then you can just use
| DocumentDB.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| It depends. With MangoDB you can test on your laptop with
| PostgreSQL and deploy to Production to Aurora... or any
| other PostgreSQL compatible DBaaS.
| kevinsundar wrote:
| But then you have to use DocumentDB.
| kdasme wrote:
| Which is the same proxy on top of PostgreSQL if I
| remember correctly. :) But MangoDB is cloud-agnostic. I
| imagine it has the same limitations as DocumentDB or
| more.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please not post in the flamewar style to HN? You
| have a long history of doing this, and I have the
| impression that it got better in the last few years (yay!
| thanks), but I also have the impression that you've been
| relapsing recently (boo, please don't). You can make your
| substantive points respectfully and without snark, and we'd
| be very grateful if you'd stick to that.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| michaelpb wrote:
| Hm, well, I never said that ANYONE who uses MongoDB is
| guilty of resume driven development. I specifically only
| indicated the ones that WERE chosen via resume driven
| development. Unless you were replying to the wrong comment?
| threeseed wrote:
| No I am replying to the right comment.
|
| I think it's disparaging to use the term resume driven
| development as though there is a large class of
| developers who are actively trying to harm projects by
| selecting inappropriate technologies.
|
| I've worked with thousands of developers over the last
| 20+ years and never seen anyone do this.
| mapcars wrote:
| Since you haven't seen it means it doesn't happen? Sad
| that 20+ years didn't teach you basics of logic.
| ryanianian wrote:
| From the HN guidelines:
|
| > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation;
| don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't
| sneer, including at the rest of the community.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Allow me to doubt that you have deep insight into the
| motivations of thousands of people that have all selected
| MongoDB for their projects. This seems unlikely for
| several reasons, if nothing else because of Dunbar's
| number.
| threeseed wrote:
| I don't need to have deep insights. Developers almost
| always have to justify why they pick certain
| technologies.
|
| And given how old MongoDB is not sure how it benefits
| anyone's resume.
| halostatue wrote:
| There are thousands of projects where MongoDB was
| selected precisely because it was a new-shiny No SQL
| thingy.
|
| For some of these things, it may have been the right
| thing. For most of them, it was a chance to play with new
| technologies. I have seen multiple commercial projects
| where MongoDB was chosen by the developers with _no_
| oversight by management (I have killed a couple of those
| projects, too, because MongoDB was always the wrong
| technology).
|
| The original comment about the number of projects where
| MongoDB was chosen under resume-driven-development is
| absolutely correct. That doesn't make it _bad_; how
| _else_ is one supposed to get experience with new
| technologies than to try something new? (Sticking with
| Mongo after multiple data-loss incidents due to the
| "architecture" of Mongo, on the other hand...)
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| If you don't understand their motivations, how can you
| claim to know their motivations?
| michaelpb wrote:
| Huh, so if we are trotting out experience credentials, I
| have also worked with thousands of developers (I guess?)
| over the last ~20 years as well. My first programming
| language was Apple BASIC on an Apple II, and I haven't
| stopped learning since!
|
| I think we use this term differently, perhaps? This term
| is not intended to be an attack, but rather just an
| acknowledgment of a common type of technical debt that
| results from people getting influenced by marketing teams
| and choosing tech based on how "trendy" it seems.
| Sometimes this might be done explicitly since they are
| intending to jump ship anyway... I've had conversations
| at the bar out of earshot of "the suits" where this exact
| topic was discussed! Most of the time it's not
| intentional or explicit, but just novice engineers
| directed by poor management to greenfield apps, and then
| falling for marketing claims and choosing based on how
| "trendy" the marketing claims it is vs real, observed
| needs. MongoDB is still getting taught at many bootcamps
| and coding curriculums as an "SQL, but better for
| beginners since you don't need that annoying schema
| thing!"
| matttb wrote:
| I've worked with tens of developers over 8 years and I've
| seen this many times.
|
| I don't think they're 'actively trying to harm projects',
| but the person you're responding to never implied that in
| any way.
| michaelpb wrote:
| Yeah, I think the person we are replying to is taking
| this a lot more negatively than I intended. I always sort
| of thought it was kind of an "open secret" that this
| stuff went on, at least here in SV / Bay Area. Perhaps
| elsewhere, where engineers don't hop around jobs every
| year or two, this sounds more like an insult or
| accusation?
| pulse7 wrote:
| "and written in Go which is a GC language" => Would it be
| better for you if it would be "written in JavaScript which
| is a GC language"?
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I agree either stay with mongodb or if you really want to
| migrate then just switch to Postgres by obviously exporting
| the data and putting it into Postgres
| vosper wrote:
| > Yeah, I could imagine this being a useful step to migrate
| away from MongoDB.
|
| What is the state of the art in this area? I did a little PoC
| of moving data from Mongo to a new schema in Postgres with
| Hexo and DBT. It worked nicely, but it was only a PoC.
| hackandtrip wrote:
| Any performance benchmark? I know it is hard to compare, but I do
| wonder if it is actually already faster than MongoDB.
| threeseed wrote:
| Highly doubt it.
|
| a) MongoDB was the fastest database I had ever tried for many
| types of use cases e.g. tuple updates and in general
| significantly faster than
|
| b) This is a Go layer in front of PostgreSQL which is fast but
| not faster than a native C socket server.
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| I'm not sure it's really an apples to apples comparison. The
| big selling point of MongoDB is that it sort of just works out
| of the box with horizontal scaling while Postgres is much more
| immature in that area.
|
| You could try running https://github.com/mongodb-labs/py-tpcc
| to get an estimate. However, that might not reflect how people
| actually use MongoDB since TPCC is focused on transactions as
| opposed to analytics.
| PeterZaitsev wrote:
| Note though you have Aurora PostgreSQL as well as CockroachDB
| and Yugabyte which speak PostgreSQL and may be able to
| support MangoDB
| james_in_the_uk wrote:
| It's not an apples to apples comparison it's a mangoes to
| mongos one :)
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| Hopefully with better durability than
| https://github.com/dcramer/mangodb
| ShinTakuya wrote:
| I immediately thought of this when I saw the title. Unfortunate
| name clash here.
| Stevvo wrote:
| What makes you think it's an "unfortunate name clash", rather
| than taking inspiration from the joke?
| philovivero wrote:
| If it also supports auto-sharting, then I think it'll do fine.
| pfraze wrote:
| I think and hope you meant sharding
| wpnbos wrote:
| check out the repo your parent comment linked
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