🗄️ Databases & Backend

MongoDB's WiredTiger Under the Hood: PostgreSQL It Ain't

Devs chased MongoDB for document freedom, ditching rigid schemas. But peek inside WiredTiger, and you'll spot the cracks — overheads, compromises, and concurrency tricks that don't quite match the hype.

Internal diagram of MongoDB WiredTiger storage engine processing an insert operation

⚡ Key Takeaways

  • BSON repeats field names per document, wasting 50-70MB per million rows vs PostgreSQL's catalog efficiency 𝕏
  • WiredTiger caches uncompressed data but compresses to disk, hitting cold reads with decompression costs 𝕏
  • Default 100ms journal sync risks data loss; use j:true for Postgres-like durability at latency cost 𝕏
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Originally reported by dev.to

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