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MongoDB vs MySQL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

MongoDB
Ranking in Open Source Databases
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
74
Ranking in other categories
NoSQL Databases (1st), Managed NoSQL Databases (5th)
MySQL
Ranking in Open Source Databases
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
146
Ranking in other categories
Relational Databases Tools (4th)
 

Featured Reviews

Hamidul Islam - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 20, 2023
Lightweight with good flexibility and very fast performance for searching data
I used the solution in the production level to search data and create education-based tutorials for a project. We had 30 managers, senior architects, tech leads, and software engineers working on the project.  Currently, I use the solution for my personal work.  The solution has good flexibility…
Patryk Golabek - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 5, 2020
Good beginner base but it should have better support for backups
As for what can be improved, right now we don't use the MySQL cluster. There is a MySQL cluster that you can run in a standalone mode, like a single database or you can do it in a cluster master-slave implementation. The cluster is not the best when it comes to MySQL. That's why we switched to MariaDB. For that simple reason that the cluster there is better. It's more manageable and it's easier to work with. We decide what to use depending on the needs. For example, if we need to mount something in a cluster mode, we use MariaDB, which again, is a Dockerized solution with a Helm chart as well, and it's very easy for us to deploy and manage, and also to scale when you just increase the number of slave versions. So MySQL doesn't have that great support when it comes to clusters. You can definitely use MySQL for that too, both support clustering, but the MariaDB is better. Additional features that I would like to see included in the next release of this solution include better support for backups. Because if you go with the MySQL Percona version, it gives you the tools to back it up securely. The vanilla version of MySQL doesn't have that. It actually does have it, but it is just really poorly executed. I would improve the backup system as well as the encryption. To make it smoother right now takes too much work. It should be a little bit smoother to backup the encrypted data the way you want it and have the ability to push it anywhere you want. That is not part of it right now. Now it is a database, so you don't know what you're going to do with it. It's difficult. You're just going to come up with solutions. But I think you can generalize here and come up with really simple solutions, which we have already in MySQL. That's probably the one thing that I would try and push right now for people to switch. But people are still not biting, because if you go with the managed version, then all the backups are taken care of for you by Amazon or Google or Microsoft. Then you really don't care. But for us, since we're doing it locally, self-hosted, we would like to have better tools for locking up the data. Right now, one aspect that is also linked to backups is running things in a crosscheck with semi-managed solutions. This requires a bit of a context. Since we're running things within the clustered communities, we're kind of pushing the Cloud into the cluster. We also want to push some of the tools for the database into a cluster, as well. So these are what we call Kubernetes operators. And there's MySQL operators that were first developed by the community. Those kind give you the ability to backup data within the cluster. So now you have a fully managed solution running from your cluster. These are called MySQL Kubernetes operators. We are looking into those right now to upgrade our solution, which would mean that we can just execute our backup natively within Kubernetes, not via special scripts. This would make it much easier to actually deal with any kind of MySQL issues within the cluster, because it would be cluster-native. That's what the operators are for. I think Oracle just created a really good one. It surprised me that they have this. It's not because of Oracle, but they got pushed by the community and actually created the MySQL Operator for Kubernetes, and that's what we're moving towards. This is going to give you an ability to have a cloud-managed solution within the cluster. And then you can ask the MySQL Operator for the database. They'll partition the database and give it to you. So it will change the nature from you deploying it to you just asking the cluster to give you a database. It's a fully managed solution right from the cluster. So that's what we're heavily looking into right now. We'll be switching to using Kubernetes MySQL Operators. It's a high-availability cluster running within the Kubernetes cluster. Right now we're pretty good with that. It's working fine. We're trying to find some time to actually release that globally everywhere. That's where I am right now. But in terms of technology, if you give up Oracle, you just go to a MySQL operator. That's the one we're using, what we're actually looking at - to create, operate and scale mySQL and sell it within the cluster. This idea of having a cognitive MySQL becomes much easier to manage within the cluster, as well. So you don't have to go with the cloud solution with AWS or Google cloud or Amazon MySQL or the Microsoft version. The Oracle SuperCluster is the Oracle MySQL operator. That's what we we are looking into a lot right now. Mainly because it does backups on demand - it's so easy to backup. You can just tell Kubernetes to backup and you don't have to run special scripts or special extra software or codes to back it up. You can make the backup as you would do anything else. Send a backup or some other data source or insert an Elasticsearch into it here. Just say "Kubernetes, back it up" and you know Oracle has this adapters within the cluster to back it up for you taking increments or different companies. So that makes it really nice and easy to use and to deploy. With that kind of solution you can ask to class or petition the database how you want. So again, it changed the nature of the kind of push-to-pull second nature system. Are you pushing your containers to a cluster? You just say cluster, "give me a database" and the class gives you the base partition database, creates a database in a secure manner, gives the connection to the database, and you're done. Then you can back it up on a schedule on to any backup switches. It's much easier. So once this goes, it is going to be widely adopted, which it should be. But I think people might not have the tech skills right now. But once it's adaptive, maybe in a few more months, it's going to be the number one solution for everybody. In terms of what I'd like to see in the next release, one thing that's always missing is dash boarding. There's no real BI tool for MySQL, like there is in Yellowfin and all the different tools that you get. They all have MySQL connectors, but there's no specific BI tool for MySQL. Open source projects have sprung up, but they're more general purpose, like Postgress, a MySQL kind of database, a relational database. I don't see any really nice tool like Cabana for elastic searches that I can tell clients to use because it would be too technical for them. They would have to have more technical engagement with writing the course, drag and drop, and creating a graph like in Power BI where you just connect with DIA. So I'd like to see the grab and drag and drop tables, nice beautiful graphics, and pie charts. You don't necessarily have that with MySQL like you have other solutions, which are really cost prohibitive for some clients. It'd be nice to have an open source solution for that. Decent solutions. I mean decent that I can take to clients. It's so technical. They want to drag and drop.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"MongoDB is simpler to learn and implement than traditional SQL solutions like MySQL."
"It is really a pretty easy product to use. It's very reliable, it's proven."
"It stores historical data with ease. For example, if you are a healthcare member, then you will have multiple records of visits to the doctors. To store such data in Oracle Database, you have to create many records. You might also have duplication problems because your records are going in again and again, because of which the data warehouse and the maintenance cost will be huge. MongoDB is comparatively lightweight. It is a JSON extract. Once you define a schema and extract it, you can push all the relationships in any way you want. It is easier to define and get different types of transactions into MongoDB. It is also easier to set it up as compared to other solutions. MongoDB is a NoSQL database, which means it is a document DB in which you can store documents that you created in BSON. It is pretty fast in response. It is faster than relational databases because it does not define any primary keys, secondary keys, tertiary keys, and all those kinds of things."
"The installation is very stable."
"I like that MongoDB has a free version. You can also buy the enterprise edition, which is cheaper than Oracle."
"The aggregation framework is really good, allowing a developer to build very complex queries."
"It is convenient to use because we can do manipulations with the JSON data that we get. There are also a lot of joins and associations with MongoDB, which makes it easy to use for us."
"MongoDB has a simple data-loading interface."
"MySQL is open-source. There are a lot of open-source communities trying to come up with their own patches, and to come up with their own features, which help MySQL develop faster than traditional databases like Oracle, which is closed source."
"MySQL's most significant attribute is its capability to create, modify, and maintain databases. This is crucial and advantageous in procedures, such as SOAR. Therefore, all SQL functions are beneficial to any backend developer or developer who requires data storage."
"This specific version of this MySQL has been battle tested for a long time. Any issues are known issues and we pretty much don't have any problems when they're in production. So it's very stable."
"The replication feature is the most valuable. We are replicating our servers."
"I would use MySQL for a medium project, with around 1,00,000 hundred thousand users, because of the indexing and stored procedures."
"This is a lightweight product that is not demanding on the resources, which is what I think gives it the edge."
"What I really like about MySQL is the opportunity to search for information and organize it any way I like."
"I am totally satisfied with MySQL."
 

Cons

"It would be much more useful if I have an admin user and a password."
"The stability could be improved."
"The product's data consistency could be more efficient than traditional SQLs."
"We'd like technical support to respond faster to queries."
"People coming from RDBMS should have the flexibility to write queries in SQL that can be converted into JSON queries."
"Simplifying the aggregation framework would be an improvement."
"I think that MongoDB's search engine should be improved."
"Enhancing the documentation to make it more beginner-friendly is crucial."
"The product is a little bit complex and it is difficult to find sufficient documentation."
"If the customer is already using or has already used Oracle for a long time they will know the look and feel and the character of this database that can fit into their business."
"The performance issues in the product can be considered as an area where improvements are required."
"MySQL's performance needs to be improved for enterprise-level applications compared to Oracle and Postgres."
"The solution could improve by having better performance and security."
"At times, the autoscaling does not happen when there is a surge in load."
"The GUI could improve in MySQL."
"The backup methods need improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's open-source."
"I believe that MongoDB is free."
"MongoDB's pricing is reasonable."
"The solution is open source, so it is free."
"MongoDB is a free solution. We wanted to have high availability and the subscription cost was quite expensive because the basic one is free and then when you want to have some other replications or other features you will need to pay money. Overall the solution is expensive."
"The pricing is favorable if you opt to install MongoDB on an Amazon EC2 instance as you won't have to pay for the extra Atlas services and can instead manage the scaling yourself. This allows for a cost-effective solution and using MongoDB on a small scale, I have been able to utilize it for free."
"I only used the open-source version."
"I believe that the licensing fees are paid on a yearly basis."
"I am using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
"There is a license for this solution. A lot of the time the solution gets bundled with other hardware or software purchases."
"I use the open-source free community version."
"MySQL is cheaper than Microsoft SQL Server."
"Can range from free to quite expensive, depending on the environments and requirements, so better to really set goals ahead of setting it up."
"MySQL is a cheap solution."
"The pricing is not much expensive, it's cheap."
"It is open-source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about MongoDB?
MongoDB's approach to handling data in documents rather than traditional tables has been particularly beneficial.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for MongoDB?
The pricing is normal. Price-wise, the product is not too much expensive.
What needs improvement with MongoDB?
MongoDB should support TypeScript.
Why are MySQL connections encrypted and what is the biggest benefit of this?
MySQL encrypts connections to protect your data and the biggest benefit from this is that nobody can corrupt it. If you move information over a network without encryption, you are endangering it, m...
Considering that there is a free version of MySQL, would you invest in one of the paid editions?
I may be considered a MySQL veteran since I have been using it since before Oracle bought it and created paid versions. So back in my day, it was all free, it was open-source and the best among sim...
What is one thing you would improve with MySQL?
One thing I would improve related to MySQL is not within the product itself, but with the guides to it. Before, when it was free, everyone was on their own, seeking tutorials and how-to videos onli...
 

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Sample Customers

Facebook, MetLife, City of Chicago, Expedia, eBay, Google
Facebook, Tumblr, Scholastic, MTV Networks, Wikipedia, Verizon Wireless, Sage Group, Glassfish Open Message Queue, and RightNow Technologies.
Find out what your peers are saying about MongoDB vs. MySQL and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
812,580 professionals have used our research since 2012.