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Comment by beatlevic | Hacker News Reader

Does this release add any features that would keep you from going for a NoSQL solution? How does it for instance compare to MongoDB in terms of raw performance and scalability? (Not mentioning of course the difference in schema-less and relational design)

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I have found Apples to Apples (fsync off in PgSQL) and doing key/value store in PgSQL, PgSQL performed on par with, or slightly faster than MongoDB, using my admittedly not fully baked KVPBench app - http://github.com/gmr/kvpbench.

FUN FACT: (and you probably already know this but many do not): "fsync = off" is postgresql-ese for "please destroy all my data". Don't do it. Ever. The 9.0 docs are finally improving the language here to indicate that you must not set fsync off if you value your job.

Setting "synchronous_commit = off" nets you 99.9% of the performance improvement without the possibility of corrupting your entire database.