Top all-time · #694
MongoDB
Company blog · blog.mongodb.orgdataprogramming
MongoDB is the company blog at blog.mongodb.org, writing about data and programming. Since 2009, 90 different Hacker News readers have linked it 134 times, most often “Why MongoDB thinks single server durability is overvalued”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-25, and you can follow it by feed.
Rarely recommended · 1 of 34 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN commenters link MongoDB's engineering blog as the official explanation for topics like the 32-bit database size limit, durability, the AGPL licence, and the MEAN stack. One commenter calls a post a good how-to.
- Recommended for · 1 comments
- One commenter describes a MongoDB post on moving from a relational database as 'a good how to'.1
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 34 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
MongoDB's blog includes technical tutorials, MongoDB best practices, customer stories, and industry news related to the leading non-relational database.
Most-linked posts?
- Why MongoDB thinks single server durability is overvalued6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2010-02-10
- /post/137788967/32-bit-limitations6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2009-08-10
- The MEAN Stack: MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS and Node.js4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2013-05-01
- MongoDB live at Craigslist - an interview with Jeremy Zawodny3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2011-05-16
- MongoDB: Operations in the New Aggregation Framework3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-01-17
- Introducing Mongo Connector3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2012-08-10
- On Distributed Consistency (6 parts)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-03-26
- /post/103832439/the-agpl3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-06-12
- Introducing the MongoDB Driver for Rust2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-07-25
- Using Go for MongoDB Backups2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-05-29
What Hacker News says?
Yes, apparently the limit on 32-bit is 2GB actually. MongoDB has always stated upfront that 32-bit architectures are not recommended for production use for precisely this reason: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations This has also has been stated on their download page for 32-bit binaries as well.
Comment linking /post/137788967/32-bit-limitations
on “Why we lost Uber as a user”Submitted MongoDB 2.0 Released as a story · 215 points
HN discussionI couldn't agree more with you. I love SQL for when I have a concrete data model, when I don't I love NoSQL. I could use both if I really wanted to, but you need to know when to force a square peg into a circle. Mongo has a good how to on it here. http://blog.mongodb.org/post/72874267152/transitioning-from-...
Comment linking /post/72874267152/transitioning-from-relational-databases-to-mongodb
on “Goodbye MongoDB, Hello PostgreSQL”Submitted MongoDB 1.8 (stable) released as a story · 187 points
HN discussionThis is a pretty epic troll on MongoDB, and some of their points are important -- particularly global write lock and uncompressed field names, both issues that needlessly afflict large MongoDB clusters and will likely be fixed eventually. However, it's pretty clear from this post that they were not using MongoDB in the best way. For example, in a small part of their criticism of "safe off by default", they write: "W…
Comment linking /post/171353301/using-mongodb-for-real-time-analytics
on “A Year with MongoDB”Submitted MongoDB 2.4 Released: Text Search, Security, Hash-based Sharding as a story · 185 points
HN discussionThe Mean Stack: MongoDB, Express JS, AngularJS, and NodeJS [1] [1] http://blog.mongodb.org/post/49262866911/the-mean-stack-mong...
Comment linking /post/49262866911/the-mean-stack-mongodb-expressjs-angularjs-and
on “Why Meteor will kill Ruby on Rails”Submitted MongoDB 2.6 Released as a story · 143 points
HN discussion> All the wrong places, as already stated. These are not the places where developers actually look. If you're not reading READMEs, installation notes, and server logs and instead depend on marketing splash pages to highlight the limitations of the technologies you use, you're a bad developer. Sorry. > Certainly not [in blog posts] http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations > It simply wasn't in the lo…
Comment linking /post/137788967/32-bit-limitations
on “Never, ever, ever use MongoDB”Submitted The MEAN Stack: MongoDB, ExpressJS, AngularJS and Node.js as a story · 92 points
HN discussionStraight from the horse's mouth ( http://blog.mongodb.org/post/103832439/the-agpl ): "To say this another way: if you modify the core database source code, the goal is that you have to contribute those modifications back to the community. Note however that it is NOT required that applications using mongo be published. The copyleft applies only to the mongod and mongos database programs. This is why Mongo DB drivers…
Comment linking /post/103832439/the-agpl
on “Mongrel2”Submitted MongoDB 1.4 Production Release as a story · 80 points
HN discussionI really wish they had been more specific about the problems they faced. It sounds like part of the headache was that they had to write their own MongoDB to ElasticSearch connector. However, 10gen has now written one which they could use to avoid writing and maintaining their own: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/29127828146/introducing-mongo-c...
Comment linking /post/29127828146/introducing-mongo-connector
on “Bye, MongoDB. Hello, Cloudant”Submitted MongoDB's New Query Matcher as a story · 77 points
HN discussionI believe the 2 GB database limit is only applicable to 32-bit instances[0]. [0]: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/137788967/32-bit-limitations
Comment linking /post/137788967/32-bit-limitations
on “MongoDB 2.6 Released”Submitted MongoDB 1.0 released as a story · 75 points
HN discussionJust to note, the MongoDB journal is basically a write ahead log and has been around since 1.8. It's not simple, you are correct, and involved remapping portions of memory privately, and leads to some inflated numbers on the virtual memory reporting side. There's a great write up here: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/33700094220/how-mongodbs-journa...
Comment linking /post/33700094220/how-mongodbs-journaling-works
on “MongoDB 2.6 Released”Submitted MongoDB writes to be safe/verified by default as a story · 68 points
HN discussionBlog post with the details is up http://blog.mongodb.org/post/30451575525/mongodb-2-2-release...
Comment linking /post/30451575525/mongodb-2-2-released
on “MongoDB 2.2.0 Released”Submitted CERN’s use of MongoDB for Large Hadron Collider data as a story · 68 points
HN discussionThe APGL license caught my eyes. Does anyone take this license into account (deciding between an Apache/MIT/BSD DB vs APGL DB) when they use it in their service / software stack. For example, this openstack thread always keeps me alert using APGL when I am developing a solution. http://lists.openstack.org/pipermail/openstack-dev/2014-Marc... and here is MongoDB's FAQ explaining APGL in plain English: http://blog.mon…
Comment linking /post/103832439/the-agpl
on “Aerospike goes Open Source”Submitted State of MongoDB March, 2010 as a story · 50 points
HN discussionSome updates are done in place, some are not. To give a specific example - integer updates are always done in place. The most common reason that a document has to be rewritten is when it is updated size is too big to fit into its previous space. Then it has to be moved. http://blog.mongodb.org/post/248614779/fast-updates-with-mon... I have found "source diving" a scary experience with Mongodb in the past.
Comment linking /post/248614779/fast-updates-with-mongodb-update-in-place
on “InfiniDB goes out of business”Submitted Why MongoDB thinks single server durability is overvalued as a story · 49 points
HN discussionMongoDB is partition tolerant and consistent. You can never have multi-master with MongoDB, which is required for "always writable." However, it can be readable. Our CEO did a series of posts on distributed consistency, see http://blog.mongodb.org/post/475279604/on-distributed-consis... .
Comment linking /post/475279604/on-distributed-consistency-part-1
on “It's Time to Drop the "F" Bomb - or "Lies, Damn Lies, and NoSQL."”Submitted Tutorial: VMware Cloud Foundry + Rails + MongoDB as a story · 45 points
HN discussionAlso an amusing blog post from the CTO: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/59489943730/todays-news
Comment linking /post/59489943730/todays-news
on “10gen is now MongoDB, Inc.”Submitted Cache Reheating - Not to be Ignored as a story · 33 points
HN discussionRust is a perfect example: http://blog.mongodb.org/post/56426792420/introducing-the-mon... So are many other newer languages and frameworks. See vibe.d ( http://vibed.org/ ) for D which has only database drivers for MongoDB and Redis.
Comment linking /post/56426792420/introducing-the-mongodb-driver-for-the-rust-programming
on “Mean Stack”Submitted MongoDB 0.9.9 Released as a story · 32 points
HN discussion
