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NEW YORK—MongoDB beat out NoSQL databases in a recent benchmark study that measured performance and scalability in real-world deployments, as it aims to become the new default database option for enterprises.
At the MongoDB World 2015 conference here, MongoDB announced that United Software Associates, an independent benchmarking and performance testing organization, delivered results of its benchmark report that showed MongoDB provided greater scalability than Cassandra and Couchbase in all tests, by as much as 13 times.
Indeed, the research, based on the Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB), showed that MongoDB outperforms Cassandra and Couchbase in deployments where the data size exceeds that of RAM, where data is partitioned across multiple servers, and where data is replicated for high availability. The full performance benchmark study is available here for download.
“While performance is important, it must be considered along with many different criteria when evaluating database technology,” said Sam Bhat, CEO of United Software Associates, in a statement. “The goal of this report is to take a closer look at scalability, another critical factor used to determine the right database technology for a project. MongoDB proved to have the best and most predictable scalability, better than either of the niche NoSQL products. With these tests we can confidently say MongoDB is well suited for the widest range of applications, and is also at the forefront of databases in terms of performance and scalability.”
MongoDB said the study results are based on evaluation of two workloads using YCSB: Workload A, an equal mix of reads and updates, and Workload B, which consists of 95 percent reads and 5 percent updates. All tests were performed with 400M records distributed across three servers, which represents a data set larger than RAM. Each test performs 100M operations and records throughput and latencies at the 95th and 99th percentiles for reads and updates separately.
According to the results of the study, in the 50/50 workload, MongoDB provides over 1.8 times greater throughput than Cassandra, and nearly 13 times greater throughput than Couchbase. And in the read-dominant workload, MongoDB provides over 1.75 times the throughput of Cassandra, and over 6 times the throughput of Couchbase.
“In this research, our goal was to evaluate the performance of MongoDB and NoSQL databases, for reads and writes, across a range of durability scenarios, putting each product on a level-playing field,” Bhat noted. “Our results show that in every scenario, MongoDB with WiredTiger clearly outperforms its competition. We were surprised to find that, even with its more extensive feature set, MongoDB outperformed key value stores at what they do best. However, as YCSB only tests a small set of the requirements necessary for any application, organizations should carefully test all their requirements to make smart choices about their database technology. We have posted the tests on GitHub so others can reproduce our findings.”
The study helps to bolster MongoDB President and CEO Dev Ittycheria’s claim that the time is now for MongoDB to become “the new default” in the database world. In the opening keynote for the MongoDB World conference, Ittycheria said MongoDB has built a great team and great product, but now is the time to build a great business.
“This is the time; this is the seminal moment where MongoDB becomes the new default,” he said.
MongoDB Set to Become the ‘New Default’ Database
Elaborating on his claim in an interview with eWEEK, Ittycheria said: “MongoDB has matured over the last four or five years. It has matured in terms of product, in terms of customers, in terms of financial health and growth. So now we’ve evolved from being a very interesting, cool technology to being the new default. It’s already happened in the startup world. Name me one startup that’s betting on Oracle as their back end database. That’s why I think we’re positioned to be the new default.”
Moreover, Ittycheria said he firmly believes the database landscape is going to change. “Right now it’s dominated by one big mega-vendor with Microsoft a close second,” he said. “And I think if you fast forward five to 10 years from now you’ll see not one mega vendor dominate but two legacy companies like Oracle and Microsoft in the top space and then two new breed companies out there—with one as the leader and the other as a close second, similar to the legacy world. There won’t be 100 database companies five to seven years from now.”
Ittycheria said he decided to join MongoDB for three primary reasons: the market, the product and the team behind the technology. He also noted that being able to build a disruptive IT company in New York City also intrigued him. Although MongoDB maintains dual headquarters in New York and in Silicon Valley with its West Coast headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Ittycheria said the vibe of the New York IT community and the huge customer base of end user organizations on the East Coast calls for the presence in the area.
Ben Golub, CEO of Docker, a key MongoDB partner, said the combination of MongoDB and Docker offers developers “massive amounts of disruption” as both companies are massively disruptive, what with MongoDB enabling pluggable storage engines and Docker’s container technology decoupling the concerns of developing, producing and distributing apps.
“If Mongo’s goal is to help you scale the internet, we want to help you program it,” Golub said. He added that he believes the companies that win in the new IT world will be the ones that embrace openness, separation of concerns, flexibility and simplicity.
Speaking from a hardware perspective, James Myers, director of SSID Solutions Architecture at Intel, said he sees a lot of opportunity in the ecosystem. “Big data is huge and the predictive analysis market is really heating up,” he said. “So it’s an exciting time to see the hardware technology advance so you can do things you couldn’t do before.”
Tom Schenk, chief data officer for the city of Chicago’s Department of Innovation and Technology, said the explosion of data is enabling his team to handle new and different queries that were impossible before. “People are asking more sophisticated questions,” he said. “Things people are asking are more easily doable now where they weren’t before.”
Schenk added that the developments in MongoDB have also enabled the city of Chicago to introduce some new use cases, such as poring through Twitter data to gain insights. “We’re using data to improve the quality of life for Chicago residents,” he said.