Mar 18, 2016 · 32m · mad
A Fireside Chat With MongoDB CTO Eliot Horowitz (Data Driven NYC / FirstMark)
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Matt Turck hosts a fireside chat with MongoDB CTO and co-founder Eliot Horowitz at Data Driven NYC, exploring MongoDB's evolution from a early startup to a leading NoSQL database. The discussion covers architectural innovations, enterprise monetization strategy, cloud competition, and future trends in database technology.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Matt holds 19.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Matt as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 3.0 Guest disagreement 0.9 Matt pushing back 1.3
speaking balance: gold is Matt, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 15:55 Dismissing Competitor Query Languages
Eliot directly dismisses rival NoSQL query languages like CQL and N1QL as uninteresting and incapable of delivering true SQL ecosystem compatibility.
Hardest push from Matt ▶ 25:10 Challenging Open Source Monetization vs AWSMatt presses Eliot on whether cloud giants like AWS threaten open-source companies by monetizing their projects as hosted cloud services without contributing back.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 5:14 Relational vs Document Model AnalogyEliot provides a detailed lesson explaining the limitations of relational databases by comparing them to Excel spreadsheets with excessive foreign key tables.
Matt holds his own ▶ 15:16 Detailed Competitor Technical KnowledgeMatt demonstrates deep sector knowledge by explicitly detailing competitor query dialects like Cassandra's CQL, Couchbase's N1QL, and Teradata's native JSON support.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Matt as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Matt pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MongoDB Origins and Evolution from TenGen | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The host sets up the origin story and asks standard background questions regarding the shift from TenGen to MongoDB. The guest explains early decisions to pivot away from an application platform toward focusing strictly on the database. | |
| Understanding NoSQL vs. Relational Databases | 2 | 5 | 1 | 0 | The host prompts a high-level explanation comparing NoSQL and relational databases for the audience. The guest gently rejects the 'NoSQL' label and uses an extended spreadsheet analogy to educate on document data modeling. | |
| Storage Engine Redesign: MongoDB 3.0 and WiredTiger Acquisition | 6 | 4 | 0 | 1 | The host demonstrates technical domain knowledge by bringing up specific release details, document-level concurrency, and the WiredTiger acquisition. The guest elaborates on WiredTiger's history and performance advantages. | |
| Enterprise Tooling: BI Connector and Compass | 6 | 3 | 0 | 2 | The host accurately recalls recently released enterprise features, prompting the guest to remark that the host remembers details better than he does. The host then steers the discussion toward polyglot persistence and database convergence. | |
| SQL Compatibility and Real-Time Analytics | 7 | 3 | 2 | 2 | The host demonstrates expertise by listing competitor-specific query languages like Cassandra CQL and Couchbase N1QL. The guest expresses a mild contrarian stance, arguing pseudo-SQL query languages are uninteresting and ineffective. | |
| Evaluating the Crowded NoSQL Landscape | 4 | 2 | 1 | 2 | The host lightheartedly invites the guest to badmouth competitors in the crowded NoSQL market. The guest takes a balanced approach, explaining why database startups get easily funded due to developer frustration. | |
| Enterprise Adoption and Open Source Monetization Strategy | 7 | 2 | 0 | 1 | The host cites exact internal financial and user conversion metrics from MongoDB's CEO. The guest lays out the three primary monetization drivers: open-source support, proprietary enterprise tools, and cloud services. | |
| Cloud Strategy and Navigating Competition with AWS | 6 | 3 | 2 | 5 | The host directly challenges the guest on the existential competitive threat posed by AWS offering hosted versions of open-source projects. The guest defends MongoDB's positioning by highlighting their AGPL license protection. | |
| Audience Q&A: SourceForge Adoption and Product Focus | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | Audience members lead the questioning regarding SourceForge's early adoption and development priorities. The guest reframes the questioner's three-part framework to focus on user success and cloud evolution. | |
| Audience Q&A: WiredTiger Adoption and the Future of JSON BI Tools | 0 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Industry analyst Tony Baer questions the guest on WiredTiger adoption rates and native JSON BI tools. The guest details adoption metrics and explains the complex UI challenge of native document visualization. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Horowitz: MongoDB has grown to around 550 employees in 2016
“The employees are about 550 employees now this year.”
Horowitz: 85% of MongoDB's engineering team is based in New York
“So most, about 85% of our engineering is based in New York, you know, in Times Square, 10 blocks away from here.”
MongoDB launched its standalone database in 2009 after pivoting from PaaS
“We were, ah, eight people at that point, and we realized that This was way too big of a space for us to take on, and decided that the database was the most interesting part of the platform, and so then in February of 2009 was the first version of MongoDB that …”
SourceForge ported its entire platform to MongoDB prior to version 1.0
“About four months after we launched SourceForge decided to port their entire platform to MongoDB, which was sort of a crazy move. I mean, this was in 2009, so it's been a while. But they ported the entire platform to MongoDB prior to MongoDB one point oh.”
SourceForge adopted MongoDB before the term NoSQL was introduced
“That was actually before the term NoSQL, I believe, by about a month or two.”
Horowitz: Relational databases function like Microsoft Excel on steroids
“A relational database is basically like Microsoft Excel on steroids. If you take Microsoft Excel, and you've got tables and rows, and you've got, you know, columns, and it's kind of like a relational database, but what a relational database does is give you an…”
Horowitz: MongoDB's key innovation was enabling indexing and searching inside documents
“The key thing that we did is, you know, you can always just store everything about a person in a single cell in a relational database. The thing that we did that was interesting was let you actually index on it and search on it and modify it in sort of very sm…”
MongoDB acquired storage engine startup WiredTiger in fall 2014
“So we ended up acquiring them in the fall of 2014, and then that became the storage engine for MongoDB in three point oh, last March.”
WiredTiger storage engine made MongoDB ten times faster in version 3.0
“Wiretiger was not a little bit better than the previous storage engine. It really was a complete leapfrog. It was, you know, 10 times faster.”
Horowitz: MongoDB 3.2 introduced join support via $lookup operator
“In three, two, we added a join operator. We call it dollar lookup, but it's fundamentally the same thing as a join, to sort of let you do some of the workloads you would take from a relational database.”
Horowitz admits MongoDB is a "pretty terrible" relational database
“Now, MongoDB is definitely not a good relational database. It's a pretty terrible relational database, but we're moving in the, in that way where you can start taking some of these workloads and putting them more into a fewer, a few different products.”
Horowitz: Pseudo-SQL NoSQL languages fail to support standard SQL-compliant tools
“The challenge with a lot of these SQL-like languages is they don't really let you use SQL-compliant tools, so you can't use your Tableau directly with it because it doesn't speak sort of standard SQL”
Horowitz: MongoDB does not plan to invest in a SQL-like query language
“We have not invested in, we don't really plan on investing in sort of a SQL-like language, because we, you know, I think SQL by itself is very useful, and then you sort of want the best possible language for developers to work with.”
MongoDB's AGPL license prevented AWS from offering it as a managed service
“It's an open source license, it's a free software foundation approved license, but it's the AGPL, and the AGPL gives us a little bit more advantage than other players, so Amazon can't quite do the same thing that they can with, ah, MySQL as they can with, so t…”
Horowitz: MongoDB saw a huge amount of Azure adoption over the past year
“What we see is a lot of, ah, a huge amount of Azure adoption in the last year.”