The meeting started at 9am and lasted till 9pm (though I had to leave at 7pm), with one-hour break for lunch. David began with a gentle but fantastic introduction to CouchDB, MongoDB, Cassandra and Redis, after which we were split into groups of 3-4, each taking one of the databases aforementioned. Our task was simple: with four big MySQL (partitioned) dumps on the local SVN, we were to migrate the data to our NoSQL DB and then prepare a simple twitter application in any language we want, preferably javascript using Node.js. Our group took the hard way of playing with Node.js, easing it up with the choice of MongoDB (as it seems to have the best community and thus support). Node.js was more of an obstacle than help, mainly because of it asynchronous nature, but it’s quite possible that we just don’t know how to write good code in it. We definitely didn’t try much, being fine with “hey, it works!”, which is just right for the kind of hacking/prototyping we were into.
We had no problems with MongoDB. With Barack Obama’s 9 million followers in mind, we settled on the best model early, choosing eventual consistency and data duplication in the name of simplicity and query performance. Because I had to go two hours early, I’ve missed the part where we were to test the performance and try our luck with replication, but nonetheless this Saturday was clearly awesome. I loved the hackengarded at
33rd Degree, but devmeetings are even more fabulous. The formula is superb. If I were to add anything, it would be an open review of each application at the end. I’m really curious how other teams did it. Checkout devmeetings web page and if you have a chance to visit one, definitely go for it. It’s great, it’s free, and it’s one of the best ways to learn something useful fast.
