I’m tired of database debates. After extensive research (a Medium article and a YouTube thumbnail), I’ve concluded: MongoDB solves everything.

Financial Transactions? MongoDB.

// Who needs ACID when you have YOLO?
db.accounts.updateOne(
  { _id: "checking" },
  { $inc: { balance: -1000000 } }
);

// If this fails, the customer probably didn't need that money anyway
db.accounts.updateOne(
  { _id: "savings" },
  { $inc: { balance: 1000000 } }
);

Transactions are a crutch for developers who don’t trust their code.

Relational Data? EMBED EVERYTHING.

Don’t do this (PostgreSQL brain-rot):

SELECT * FROM users 
JOIN orders ON users.id = orders.user_id
JOIN products ON orders.product_id = products.id;

Do this (enlightened):

{
  _id: "user_1",
  name: "John",
  orders: [
    {
      product: {
        name: "Laptop",
        manufacturer: {
          name: "Dell",
          employees: [/* all 133,000 of them */]
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}

16MB document limit? That’s 16MB of freedom.

Time-Series Data? MongoDB.

Prometheus? InfluxDB? TimescaleDB? Marketing scams.

Just create a collection called metrics and insert documents. Who cares if queries take 47 minutes? You shouldn’t be looking at metrics that often anyway.

Graph Relationships? MongoDB.

{
  _id: "person_1",
  friends: ["person_2", "person_3"],
  friends_of_friends: ["person_4", "person_5", /* computed once, never updated */],
  friends_of_friends_of_friends: [/* 8 million documents embedded */]
}

Neo4j charges per node. MongoDB charges per cluster. Do the math.

The Schema Question

“But MongoDB is schemaless—”

EXACTLY.

My users collection has documents with email, e_mail, emailAddress, user_email, and 📧. This is called flexibility.

When marketing asks “how many users have emails?”, I say “yes.”

Migration Story

We migrated from PostgreSQL to MongoDB. Results:

  • Queries: 340ms → 34 seconds (more time to think)
  • Data integrity: 99.99% → ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  • Developer happiness: Measurable → Immeasurable

Conclusion

Stop using the right tool for the job. Use MongoDB for every job. If it doesn’t fit, your job is wrong.

XKCD 1179 wants you to use ISO 8601 for dates. MongoDB wants you to store dates as strings, integers, or vibes. MongoDB respects your freedom.

As Dilbert’s Wally once said: “I’ve found that the best database is the one I don’t have to maintain.” MongoDB maintains itself through eventual consistency and hope.

The author’s bank account is stored in MongoDB. Current balance: NaN.