CEO Dev Ittycheria, while announcing the company's second-quarter results - which exceeded expectations with revenue growing 13% to $478.1 million - stated that recent success is partly due to competitive wins against PostgreSQL, the system that ranked as the most popular database among professional developers last year, according to the Stack Overflow survey.
MongoDB reported an operating loss of $71.4 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2025, ending July 31, which is a significant increase from the $49.0 million loss reported in the same quarter a year ago. However, Ittycheria wouldn't let this dampen the optimistic mood following the results, which sent the company's stock value soaring 14%.
He claimed MongoDB has been leveraging their database service, Atlas, to win workloads away from PostgreSQL in a project at Fanatics Betting & Gaming, the sports ecosystem company Fanatics’ $30 billion valued division.
"Initially, the team launched the platform on PostgreSQL but faced challenges with scalability, flexibility, and excessive complexity," the CEO said during the investor call. "After migrating to MongoDB Atlas, the team also integrated Atlas Search to provide users with a better experience in finding all the available betting options. Fanatics plans to continue developing on MongoDB Atlas to ensure they can operate at scale as they prepare for the NFL season kickoff."
The context surrounding Fanatics Betting & Gaming’s decision remains unclear. It's possible they simply didn't choose the right database for the job the first time around.
Nevertheless, Ittycheria asserted this is part of an ongoing trend of promoting MongoDB against PostgreSQL. He pointed out that PostgreSQL has been around for 40 years, as if that were a bad thing.
"The technology has been around a long time," he said. "They’re really a beneficiary of the lift and shift from Oracle, SQL Server, and MySQL, so they’ve kind of consolidated the relational market. In terms of why we’re competing or why we’re winning…MongoDB has a very flexible schema that allows you to store documents in a JSON-like format. This is beneficial for app structures that evolve over time.
"We can do horizontal scaling," he added, "so we make it really easy to distribute data across multiple servers or virtual machines for applications that need large amounts of data. Again, we can handle the performance of large datasets better than PostgreSQL. The built-in sharding allows for automated distribution of data."
He also claimed that MongoDB is better for developer productivity because the JSON-like format and flexible schema result in faster development cycles, aiding customers using agile development.
Digging Deeper: Are MongoDB’s Claims Grounded?
Ittycheria's claims raise questions about whether users migrating from legacy relational databases to PostgreSQL are "just sticking with relational because that’s what they know."
With their vested interests, such comments leave a lot to be unpacked. PostgreSQL overtook MongoDB in the DB-Engines rankings around 2017, and the gap has been widening ever since. In the latest Stack Overflow survey, PostgreSQL gained traction and is now used by 52% of developers.
While some applications may be best served by dedicated document databases, PostgreSQL can support JSON documents and has been able to do so for years.
It’s also important to remember that PostgreSQL is not just PostgreSQL. All three major cloud vendors support PostgreSQL frontend services, while CockroachDB and YugaByteDB both provide PostgreSQL-compatible frontends, with the added benefit that they support distributed backends for large-scale global applications.
Do MongoDB’s Claims Disrupt PostgreSQL's Dominance?
MongoDB’s latest financial news follows a tough period for the NoSQL database company.
In May, its valuation plummeted by a quarter after the company lowered its revenue growth expectations for the remainder of the year, disappointing investors. It takes more than a few questionable claims against a rival database to reclaim that lost ground.
While MongoDB may have some wins against PostgreSQL, claiming they have overtaken PostgreSQL in the battle for database market dominance is an exaggeration. PostgreSQL remains a highly popular and respected database in the developer community, and has plenty of strength behind it, including a strong open-source community and support from major cloud vendors.
It’s essential to evaluate MongoDB's claims critically, given their stake in the matter. Their future success may depend on their ability to deliver real value to customers, not just on their ability to hype achievements against competitors.
source: emka.web.id
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