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Comment by true_religion | Hacker News Reader

Er... you seem to be implying that people are using NoSQL solutions like Redis, Toyko Tyrant, Elastic Search, etc. for fun but that's not the case.

Sometimes you just pick the simplest thing that works and that can be a key value store, data structures in memory, or a lucrene interface. It's a better solution and less fragile than trying to force everything into a relational model.

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No, I think he's implying that people are using NoSQL solutions because they've been hyped a lot and are fashionable. And that's most certainly the case (certainly not the only reason in all cases, but most certainly a reason in many cases).

I must admit that I picked mongodb (+ node) for my latest project for fun. But I then discovered that being able to dump json straight into a datastore without having to create tables etc. first was a great benefit in quickly building something out.

So something I did for fun turned out to be the simplest thing which worked. Only I didn't know that when I did it. I think developers who don't occasionally pick something new for fun on a side project are doomed not to know when that new thing could actually be applicable on a project that matters.

MongoDB isn't the best example to use as a genralization of NoSQL.

Many NoSQL databases have a structure you have to conform to---its just not a relational structure.

I'd actually like to do that too but have a hard time wrapping my head around the notion of building a website with node + nosql alone. My understanding is that node is best for realtime chat-like apps.. Is your project web related might I ask?

Node is very handy for high transaction, short transfer, high connection count applications like chat. That's because of the non blocking single thread architecture, low overhead connections, and little bloat (small footprint).

However, that doesn't mean it isn't well suited for building a website. You'd probably want to include some add-ons for that though (eg: express).

Note that even for realtime chat-like apps you'll probably need some kind of datastore and in fact that example sounds like a great use case for nosql as a datastore.

Thank you for mentioning express, I'm now excited to use it in my next project!

Hi, sorry for the slow reply. As mentioned express is a good way to go for getting a website up with node.

Since you asked, my project is over here http://jobstractor.com if you want to take a look. My email is on the site so feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions. I'm planning on writing up my experience and a bit about how I've structured things so some questions might help me think through that.

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