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Comment by venus | Hacker News Reader

> Postgres has never been popular. [..] MongoDB is replacing MySQL not Postgres

I don't know what you are basing that on, but it's the complete opposite of what I am seeing. Postgres is now the default open source database as far as I can see, especially for Rails. MongoDB enjoyed a brief hype-fuelled day in the sun but is now viewed as a specialised tool whose choice over a more general RDBMS would require considerable justification.

I suspect the question of whether its popularity is "exploding" or not depends on your definition of the word. I have certainly noticed a very marked uptick in the last few years. Not exploding perhaps, but certainly ballooning.

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Thats what I meant by "growing at a manageable rate".

Well maybe Postgres and Mongo are replacing MySQL. I haven't seen Postgres being the default, but who knows, I mostly hang around with people who have been long term postgres users anyway.

I suppose my main experience is with rails people, and as of rails 4 postgres is pretty clearly the "default" DB, emphatically displacing MySQL.

The author appears to come from much more of a node.js angle and so probably what he sees is different. I'm probably underestimating the number of node.js projects so the author likely has a good point. Still, I'd raise an eyebrow pretty highly at anyone who considered MongoDB a solid default choice for a general purpose application. Most companies I know who opted for MongoDB regret it, for reasons that have been rehashed here any number of times.

> Postgres is now the default open source database

Really ? I still see MySQL and MongoDB both being the two most deployed.

Yeah, I realised after typing it that there's probably a huge amount of availability bias in my statement. It wouldn't surprise me if Wordpress MySQL deploys outnumber all rails/django postgres deploys combined. And the PHP mainstream isn't moving away anytime soon.

MongoDB, though - I do question that, however I have no figures and it again probably depends on the circles in which you move whether you see a lot of it or not. I don't move in node circles much, so I hardly see it at all.

Mea culpa. That said, in the startup-filled tech incubator in which I work, and in which rails is pretty dominant, postgres is king. Make of that what you will.

I work in the enterprise space and MongoDB is very popular. It isn't replacing MySQL or PostgreSQL at all (neither of which I've ever seen) but rather Oracle. And it's big in the higher end internet space as well:

http://www.mongodb.org/about/production-deployments/

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