MongoDB in 5 Minutes

It’s important to understand how businesses are performing. We use things like earnings reports and press releases for that.

I personally don’t believe we need all the details of how the tech from our companies works – I actually think that can get in the way of investing (sometimes).

BUT we need to have a fundamental understanding of what our companies do. Here’s a 5 minute video from MDB CTO and Co-Founder Eliot Horowitz introducing MDB.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE8ZTQxa0AM

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That’s a great video for someone entirely new to databases and MongoDB. I find it interesting that they compared using MongoDB to Excel instead of a database structure such as SQL. The first half of the video could be used to describe the function of any database. They get into the differentiating features but don’t do much comparison to other existing databases.

For me, one big question is what data structure will be used to organize all the data that will be coming in from autos. Cars will be generating massive amounts of data that dwarf all other data sources. Whose software will win out in processing all of this data? That’s the billion dollar question.

Great video.

To the question of autos, most of that is time series data – what is happening now, and now, and now. What I don’t know is how much of the past history of the data is worth storing. Collect, communicate, analyze, discard. Is that the model? I think so, but I’m not “in” that industry, so just guessing. One place that also has this issue of a huge amount of data is the Large Hadron Collider. This machine generates so much data, so quickly, that even their immensely powerful computers cannot store it all, let alone analyze it all. So what they do is make educated guesses on what to store and what to throw away. My own educated guess is the auto industry will need to take a similar approach. But this still doesn’t answer the billion dollar question to propose. :frowning:

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I believe what they were comparing is Mongo to relational databases saying that relational databases are in essence just Excel on steroids. Then he explains why that is so. I personally believe there are uses for both.

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That’s a great video for someone entirely new to databases and MongoDB. I find it interesting that they compared using MongoDB to Excel instead of a database structure such as SQL.

This video addresses an audience that does not know databases and assumes that everyone is by now familiar with spreadsheets.

Related tables (relational databases) are one way to solve the variable amount of data in each field. You can do it in a flat file by making the fields lists or by using name-value pairs. HTML and JSON use two different versions of it.


<person>
  <fname>Joe</fname>
  <lname>Smith</lname>
  <tel>
    <loc>home</loc>
    <num>555-1234</num>
  </tel>
  <tel>
    <loc>office</loc>
    <num>888-1234</num>
  </tel>
</person>

This has become a de-facto language.

In some ways relational databases are more cumbersome but in others more efficient. Back around 1984 I started a database of high tech companies. ZIP codes and area codes told me the preferred destinations: Silicon Valley, Boston, Texas, and Redmond. With a relational database I only had to search the telephone or the ZIP code table, not whole data set.

But the solution one uses also has a lot to do with the state of the art of technology. With super-fast storage I mind less going through a lot of data. These things ebb and flow like the tides but not as regularly.

Denny Schlesinger

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Even I understood that. Nice find.

🆁🅶🅱

I have a hard time believing anyone is throwing data away. These days data is worth more than everything else.

I work with time series financial data. We use kdb+ for this. It’s a product by Kx (https://kx.com/). They’re mostly in the financial domain and started to penetrate utilities and other domains recently.

https://www.geekwire.com/2019/amazon-web-services-calls-mong…

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That is why MongoDB opened 10% lower this morning.
Is Amazon becoming the bully that is trying to push everyone out?
I am staying with MongoDB
Erik

Mongo is getting a beating right now but I can’t find any commentary here other than an MF article headlining “Why I’m selling Mongo”. Is the consensus to hang on for the ride with such a good company