New Mongo thread

<<<and in the meanwhile make sure everyone gets paid and the accounting all balances, and every last bit of it (and more) is in relational databases. Boring stuff, but you can’t live without it.>>>

Yes, that is why Cisco and this bank, and multiple other examples are using the NoSQL for customer facing applications and transactions. I have no doubt supply chain and accounts payable stuff will remain SQL.

Tamhas, however, told me to prove it. I already did in past posts. Perhaps Tamhas may want to do some research and prove me wrong on this.

Thanks for the insight RHin. That is what we have all been saying (except Tamhas) but you put it much more succinctly using your industry knowledge.

Tinker

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Duma,
Thanks for getting this one on my radar a couple weeks back.

It is on the short list for sure.

I am on the hint for 3 baskets of stocks to keep an eye on

Darn mobile…hit enter too soon. 3 baskets are:

  1. Stocks ready to invest in now - primarily high-growth, preferably small-cap.

  2. Known upcoming IPOs of interest. Be interested in what news sources anyone uses to track upcoming IPOs?

  3. Companies that are private but of interest if they ever do IPO. Examples night be MapR, SpaceX, iPinU (china version of the trade desk). No particular industries but i tend to be tech/science focused. If a clear leader in blochchain emerges. If Memphis Meats (or competitor) can crack code of cell-grown meat, etc…

-Dreamer

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You do understand that a customer facing application is typically not characterized by high volumes of complex transactions and that the boring back office applications which actually run the business are characterized by high volumes of complex transactions?

Modern, customer facing applications typically don’t talk directly to the database at all. They are often written in a different language than the business logic behind them.

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Really insightful thread. Thanks for all the information. Much appreciated.

When I first looked into this one, I think I wrote it off because of the loss it was racking up but the moat looks much better than I initially thought.

I have a couple developer friends who swear by Mongo. Will look into it more.

Best,
Fish

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Or is NoSQL destined to be a passing fancy? I doubt Tamhas thinks this, although his posts on the topic would indicate he thinks not much of it. Which is fine, although it does seem to defy the evidence we have.

I have some expertise with a non-Mongo nosql DBMS system, general experience in multiple others, and I would heed tamhas much more carefully than you have.

What has traditionally been regarded as “NoSQL” can be divided into several different classifications, Mongo falling into the category of document store. But there are 4 leading contenders (Cassandra/DataStax, a column store; Redis a key-value store; Couchbase, a document store; and Riak, which has a key-value and timeseries product but the parent company Basho has recently gone bankrupt). You also have Marklogic, which is a larger, but somewhat niche player.

Further there are nosql-like systems like search engines (Elasticsearch or Lucene/Solr) and distributed transaction logs like Confluent/Kafka. Some cases even call for graph databases like Neo4j or Titan which are more related to efficiently querying edge/vertex sets taking advantage of mathematical symmetries in these structures than any type of storage. They may be compete in some architectures, or may coexist in others.

You should also be aware that there are constant new entrants (Scylla, RocksDB, CockroachDB, et al), some have been acquired already (Foundation to Apple), and may large tech companies have closed source internal databases (Manhattan at Twitter).

That also DBaaS platforms like Microsoft Cosmos, Google Spanner, Amazon DynamoDB, et al. that all have different technical characteristics, beyond what I will go into here, but for one example Spanner is supposed to have “solved” some distributed state synchonization problems involving GPS satellites and atomic clocks.

Finally, you can have many nosql characteristics in traditional relational systems (sharding, replication/failover, document storage and indexing) that might offset the typical operational complexity of many nosql systems. Honestly, on the low end the k-v vendors probably overlap with plain old caches that support sharding (memcached, ehcache).

All the questions about technology selection end up revolving around intended use and operation characteristics. The fundamental problem is tuning for the intrinsic tradeoffs in CAP (consistency, availability, and partition tolerance… generally speaking, databases can “choose two”). Ie you might select differently if you are writing a recommendation, fraud detection, metric collection, messaging, payment processing, or ad tracking systems. No single vendor is going to capture all the nosql tam.

Anyway, hopefully it’s clear that it is a very complicated landscape of competing, well funded companies. db-engines is something many people want to have good placement in (same as they would with Gartner) but it shouldn’t be overly relied on (also same as Gardner). MongoDB was extremely efficient in developer relations and providing an easy on-ramp, but as a result you have things like the 2017 ransomware attack based on the Shodan scans indicating 10s of thousands of unsecured MongoDB clusters because you have so many are being run in situations that are probably smaller scale and, as a result, harder to monetize. I think that manifests in their relatively high db-engines rank versus relatively low margins and revenue on the balance sheet.

Also, you should take the MDB multi-document ACID-compliance claims with a grain of salt. It is a month old announcement of a technical beta.

As a stock, their float is small. Look at the float % short vs short ratio. They have a lockup expiring. They are easy to move and will probably be volatile. The competitive landscape is tough. I would keep an eye on burn rate just as much as revenue growth. On the other side, they’re ubiquitous enough to be part of their own technology stack acronym (“MEAN”) and are undeniably popular. If I had to, I’d be net long, but certainly not 100%. I’m currently neither.

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* In addition we have brought up the Mongo is the ONLY SERIOUS DATABASE IN THE WORLD THAT IS BOTH NoSQL and ACID certified. It is unique. NO ONE ELSE DOES THIS. OF COURSE IT IS NOT AS MATURE AS A 50 YEAR OLD TECHNOLOGY - BUT IT WILL GET BETTER OVER TIME. Jeepers the latest iteration is going beta this summer!

The distinction between ACID compliant and multi-document ACID compliant is actually an important one. Do you know the name of the bank working with MongoDB 4.0 that you are referencing and is there a whitepaper?

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I have some expertise with a non-Mongo nosql DBMS system, general experience in multiple others, and I would heed tamhas much more carefully than you have.

Hey AJM:

Can you remind me exactly what tamhas has warned that we should heed specific to MongoDB?

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The distinction between ACID compliant and multi-document ACID compliant is actually an important one. Do you know the name of the bank working with MongoDB 4.0 that you are referencing and is there a whitepaper?

https://www.computerworlduk.com/data/barclays-reduces-relian…

https://diginomica.com/2016/11/15/barclays-has-plans-to-let-…

Barclays.

Again AJM, lets read what is actually being posted including all the cautionary notes. I have already discussed the fact that 4.0 is not out until this summer and it isn’t known to what degree this new update will effectively the numerous customer requests.

That has been stated numerous times.

Here was their multi-document AICD announcement:

https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/multi-document-transaction…

https://www.mongodb.com/blog/post/multi-document-transaction…

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mongodb-announces-multi-docum…

We are discussing the business model and customer base in more detail on the NPI if you are interested:

http://discussion.fool.com/mongodb-business-model-33010238.aspx?..

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Can you remind me exactly what tamhas has warned that we should heed specific to MongoDB?

No.

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What more is there to it than they sell DBaaS via Atlas and traditional on-prem licenses? They’ve been around a decade, I remember when they were 10gen, and they story has roughly been the same: make it very available for free usage (license as AGPL to prevent larger players from offering it as a service) and upsell as usage increased (freemium)

The Barclays links are mostly unrelated to multi-doc ACID x-actions, and I should note it’s also 1.5 years old (https://www.mongodb.com/europe16/schedule/, 10:35 session?), not related to 4.0. Barclays says they use it as a read mirror to mainframes. Not a bad idea, but not particularly related to nosql on the face of it. Barclays has very good people so it’s probably more complicated than this, but it seems to be in the role of a distributed cache. Like Akamai in this situation - mongo is analogous to edge nodes in a cdn. What’s going on in the mainframe is likely something Mongo would not be well suited to replace (the oltp part), and could be considered harder (I can’t speak for anyone, but I think that may be related to the idea tamhas is trying to get across, to answer your earlier question).

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Finally (and this is it for me, really) obviously I have a bad track record here having been skeptical and wrong about NVDA, NTNX, and AYX so what the heck do I know. I’m probably wrong about MDB.

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Ajm,

I appreciate the information. Will take a while to digest it. What it does remind me of is Twilio. Insiders and those with knowledge everywhere always said Twilio was the leader, but that competition was fierce, and CAP was waning. And to a degree that has been proven true. The lower end things, like with Okta, have largely become commoditized, but no one has been able to match Twilio on the higher end stuff, and Twilio continues to outgrow the industry as it continues to improve its offerings and grow its customer base. Enterprise is where I said they had to go, and so they are going. Will not comment further on Twilio.

That is what I expect will happen with MongoDB.

Tinker

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I am on an iPad mini and too late to pick and choose sites. The quote below is from the November 2016 Computerworld article that Duma linked to.

Important to put it into the context of the conversation we have been having about MongoDB (MDB), including the real world information given by ajm and Tamhas.

Just as I described, the Mongo database is a work in progress and constantly getting better. Yes, this project by Barclays (and remember this is highly regulated Barclays that can go out of business, executives jailed, etc. if something much less worse happened than what happened to Equifax, and every single piece of data is precious and must not be lost) started out as basically a read only cache, mirror image of what was on the mainframe.

The reason for this, is that the best software are servers you can buy (as obviously Barclays had the resources to buy them) were insufficient to meet customer needs in the new age of apps and the East West, always up cloud era.

Thus, they created a read only cache of the mainframe so that customers could get their balance and transaction information without it ever going down. A big problem in the entire banking industry that regulators are getting on their tails about. And pisses me off as well. It may have something to do with running Safari on Mac, but I am not able to access one of my 3 major accounts at least 1x a week or so. And sometimes this is business critical.

Anyways, as the below indicates, Barclays is now planning (and I am sure it is now up and running) to stop just mirroring the mainframe with the MongoDB, but start using the MongoDB itself as the front facing data vehicle for clients to get their information. In fact, it sounds like the mainframe will now become the backup, and that it worked so well that the Mongo is now the lead database. Don’t beliveve me, read it for yourself.

But the article goes on (I did not paste it for reasons stated above) that more than this, that the MongoDB creates even more capabilities. Have you ever noticed in your bank account that when you go to look at transaction data you get maybe a few days, a week, or a month at most. And then you can customize the date range? Turns out that is a consequence of SQL database shortcomings. The SQL technology is overtaxed by all that data! No Tamhas, not making this up.

However, by using the MongoDB (yes, and I am sure many other open source NoSQL data bases can do it as well, and maybe Hadoop as well (but I know little about this type of database) 100s or thousands of transactions can be accessed at a time remotely by the customer with no drain on the systems!

Further, beyond this, Barclays is talking about making such data available to access through Facebook, et al.

To go even further, Barclays is also talking about more personalized marketing. With the NoSQL, more data can be managed, enabling marketing to individuals to be more individual as it analyzes the data (or more likely machine learning type results).

I mean, WHO KNEW THAT SQL DATABASES WERE THAT LIMITING! Well, now we do.

And btw/ on marketshare of NoSQL databases - from a different source - Mongo has 1/3 or more of the dollar value marketshare for NoSQL databases. That is of course a picture in time, and can change, but NoSQL total revenues was round $370 million, Hadoop around $320 million. That would give Mongo ~1/3 or more total marketshare by dollar. So please, don’t tell me that utterly enormous mindshare is not translating into dollar usage either, even this early in the market.

Finally, all of this was done without the 4.0 multiple document beta. Yes, yes, disclaimer, it might suck! Got it. It might not either. And it will constantly get better.

So the quote I pulled out is as follows, but the information above mostly comes from the Computer World article Duma linked to from late 2016. You can see from the above, and below, just how quickly use cases for MongoDB are being found and growing. Yes, yes, NoSQL databases in general and that market is lead, it appears, by dollar and mindshare by Mongo But the quote below:

Chandrasekaran said that the bank is quickly expanding the use of the ODS platform. This means using it as the “first port of call” for customer data, rather than just as backup for mainframe systems as had initially been intended.

One example he gave was serving up data for online and mobile banking ‘landing pages’. This is one of the most intensive data procedures that the bank will have to perform - querying personal accounts, savings and mortgage databases at once, for instance - and occurs every time a customer logs in to access digital banking services.

“We are hitting the mainframe five million times a day for one of the heaviest queries,” he said.

Instead, Barclays plans to hold the customer data in the ODS platform, allowing it to be retrieved in close to real-time when a customer reaches the landing page.

“[With MongoDB] It is a single lookup and that makes it faster, simpler and extremely cheaper.”. <<<MY EMPHASIS - EXTREMELY CHEAPER. NOT JUST CHEAPER.>>>

This has meant a departure from the initial aim of essentially providing back up to mainframes, and instead benefiting from the advantages of the NoSQL technology.

He said: “What we started off as a resilience use case we are now also making a mainframe offload use case. This is currently in progress and we are hoping to go live by Q2 next year.”

But perhaps Mongo is defrauding everyone when they are making their marketcase, and Barclays is a fluke thing and an experiment, static as it will never expand or improve, and Barclays is willing to put it reputation on the line, and face legal jeopardy with regulators, by moving data intensive mission critical functions from the more expensive, legacy, SQL servers just to save an “extreme” number of dollars.

Tinker

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Finally (and this is it for me, really) obviously I have a bad track record here having been skeptical and wrong about NVDA, NTNX, and AYX so what the heck do I know. I’m probably wrong about MDB.

Hey that would have been a pretty profitable portfolio these past couple years :wink:

AJM:

I have used a bear and bull case analysis on every investment for quite some time and merely invest in probabilities…but we never have certainties.

In the case of MongoDB, if you go back to the original thread and the many others at the NPI and here, you will see that we have been evolving the bull vs bear case:

http://discussion.fool.com/mongodb-revisited-33003303.aspx?sort=…

http://discussion.fool.com/mongo-magic-33003304.aspx?sort=whole#…

http://discussion.fool.com/mongo-and-okta-33007128.aspx?sort=who…

http://discussion.fool.com/mongodb-business-model-33010238.aspx?..

You may find it helpful to consider Mongo in that light…there is no wrong in that analysis…its just laying out potential scenarios.

As regards Mongo, it would be a very high risk investment for the many reasons we have stated. Maybe you don’t care for that…but the analysis can still be rewarding for future investments.

And…as we stated, there will be many potential bites on this apple…earnings after close and the stock lockup expiration on 4/17…so you have plenty of time to assess.

I will be refining the bull/bear analysis in next couple days…would love to have you participate.

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Thanks for the informative discussion. I have a minor question - what is ODS platform? - as mentioned in Tinker’s post:
"Chandrasekaran said that the bank is quickly expanding the use of the ODS platform. This means using it as the “first port of call” for customer data, rather than just as backup for mainframe systems as had initially been intended.

One example he gave was serving up data for online and mobile banking ‘landing pages’. This is one of the most intensive data procedures that the bank will have to perform - querying personal accounts, savings and mortgage databases at once, for instance - and occurs every time a customer logs in to access digital banking services.

“We are hitting the mainframe five million times a day for one of the heaviest queries,” he said.

Instead, Barclays plans to hold the customer data in the ODS platform, allowing it to be retrieved in close to real-time when a customer reaches the landing page."

Thanks,
Dave

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Have I answered my own question?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_data_store

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However, by using the MongoDB (yes, and I am sure many other open source NoSQL data bases can do it as well, and maybe Hadoop as well (but I know little about this type of database) 100s or thousands of transactions can be accessed at a time remotely by the customer with no drain on the systems!

The uses you describe are all read-only and therefore do not require multi-document ACID transactions. The mainframe is still where the actual work is done. This is just supporting the customer-facing activity.

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Duma and Tinker,

You have shown a very thoughtful and thorough understanding of both the Bull and Bear case surrounding noSql technology, and have have eloquently explained it. Tip of the hat to you.

I would move that we suspend further discussion for now, pending new information which meaningfully impacts this thesis.

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The good news is that Duma and Tinker are very independent minded individuals who will always do and say what they want. The bad new is that within the course of a week we have had two posters on this board who want to shut down discussion.

This is obviously Saul’s board and he can police it however he likes (and does a great job of it).

I have only followed this board for about one year. I read it almost every day, one of my favorite things to do. I find both Tinker and Duma well informed, seasoned investors who freely share their knowledge. Something I appreciate a great deal.

Do not recall a single useful comment from “doppelg36”. Why does he think he has the right to shut down conversation on a topic of great interest to others? Simply do not read or ignore. Wish I knew how to send him a private message and no bother the rest of you.

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