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Comment by rodrigogs | Hacker News Reader

Ok then... Install your heavy SQL database on your super fast machine and use it for everything till your memory screams.

I'm not saying SQL databases are bad. It's just... They are not the only choice! You should be happy that now we have tons of alternatives to choose.

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Sigh.

You know why many SQL databases use a lot of RAM? Because it improves their performance. They don't require the RAM, they just use it when it's available. Would you rather that it uses your free RAM to speed up your database operations, or to just have it sit idle doing nothing?

As for not being "the only choice" - while technically correct, this is very misleading. SQL databases and schemaless/document stores are _not interchangeable_. They are used for different usecases with different data models and different integrity requirements.

MongoDB is a special one entirely - even for a schemaless document store, it's just very poorly designed and maintained. Use any of the many other such databases - which gained a reputation by actually working well in production, rather than its developers organizing lots of hackathons as a marketing stunt.

1. SQLite isn't heavy. There are probably even lighter-weight relational solutions, but I haven't needed one, so I haven't looked.

2. Even among non-relational document storage solutions, Mongo has a poor reputation. As someone else says elsewhere in the comments, it's hard to trust a team that let so many ridiculously dangerous bugs (and a basically unreliable design) out into production for so long.

No SQLite isn't heavy but I hope you mean for use in development only.

The issue isn't MongoDB is bad and relational DBs are awesome. The real issue is new developers being taught that Mongo and NoSQL in general are the databases you should be using with Node. The problem secondary to that is devs not knowing when each is appropriate.

SQLite is the most widely deployed database engine out there.

Not in production it isn't.

My browser tell me something other.

I don't mean 'on the desktop' when referring to database use in production.

It's actually commonly used in production for certain types of databases. SQLite is not a replacement for something such as postgresql but it certainly has it's use cases.

Do you mean for public facing sites? If so, what are the use cases?

The use case for SQLite isn't high traffic public facing webpages. Here is their own list of 'famous' users: https://www.sqlite.org/famous.html

Every iPhone, and Android phone have SQLite running on them, which easily makes it the most used production database. It's use case is typically very low traffic websites or as client side storage.

Maybe I'm missing something but is Mongo in use on the client side in that same way? If not then SQLlite is being shoehorned into the discussion and the context in which production was used should be clear. I feel like people are trying to be technically right instead of following the actual discussion. I never meant client side software and definitely didn't mean someone's micro traffic blog, where a toy database could be used.

It is interesting how much penetration SQLlite has on the client, though.

At any rate, I know better than to not be extremely specific so I brought this on myself.

It seems like there have just been some assumptions going both ways.

This all started when someone trashed RDBMS for being "heavy", implying that Mongo is good because it's light.

Why would you care how heavy a DB is if it's not on the client side? The kind of memory and storage you need for even the heaviest popular RDBMS (MySQL?) is still low enough that's nearly free to create a small app.

The only reason I brought it up is that there is a myth that many developers believe SQLlite is only useful as a dev enviroment database

On a multiuser system, that's a reasonable assumption.

That's partially true, but it does seem to find it's way in production on lots of low traffic sites.

Especially if you count all the phones and copy machines and AV equipment. Embedded databases are fun to code with.

Sqlite can and is widely used in production server-side.

It's about time the "develoment only" myth was laid to rest. Please read the links bellow:

https://charlesleifer.com/blog/sqlite-small-fast-reliable-ch...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1711631/improve-insert-pe...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/784173/what-are-the-perfo...

If you don't have the resources to run PostgreSQL, you sure as heck can't run MongoDB.

And if you really have minimal requirements, I recommend SQLite.

I'll just leave this here.

http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2015/07/19/why-you-should-ne...

SQL databases are not heavy and d not require super fast machines.

There are options like RethinkDB, Firebase, etc.

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