Products · Product
MongoDB
Raised as a usability problem by 54 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2010–2025), in 44 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
JSON-based query syntax is counter-intuitive, with non-obvious problemsUnreviewed
20102026- Query syntax is messy and the documentation is hard to read2016-06-07
- Complex queries require ugly JSON, hard to read and needing heavy workarounds2014-03-26
- Query syntax has non-obvious problems; JSON-based querying feels counter-intuitive2014-01-08
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Page auto-switches to Portuguese then jumps back to English while URL stays pt-br2025-05-19
- Query optimizer now picks bad indexes, making aggregations unresponsive; needed hints2025-02-24
- Most operators have 2-3 forms with different syntax, hard to learn2024-08-17
- Login fails with vague error; support portal requires the login that is failing2023-12-16
- Aggregation framework is horrible to work with for the commenter2022-12-22
- Spent several days failing to get MongoDB working with Node2022-08-24
- Building complex queries with aggregations is a huge pain to figure out2022-02-25
- Aggregation pipelines are confusing and subtle details silently return incorrect data2021-05-07
- Management GUI enters irrecoverable error states during basic operations like restoring backups2021-02-01
- Fails to translate complex LINQ expressions into Mongo queries, and BSON handling is slow2020-11-26
- Long queries time out with no option to let them finish, and JSON queries must be converted for Python2020-06-13
- Auto-suggested indexes are often poor, forcing users to learn indexes anyway2020-05-26
- Requested isolation level silently not applied; the needed setting is ambiguously named and buried2020-05-25
- Working with MongoDB was painful enough that the author moved data to Elasticsearch2020-05-24
- Documentation and error messages are not obvious, leaving users stuck on consistency settings2020-05-24
- Documentation is unclear and guarantees are unintuitive, requiring careful reading2020-05-24
- Client library is unusable and network protocols are almost impossible to understand2020-05-24
- Manual indexing is annoying enough that the team switched to a database that indexes automatically2020-05-22
- Exporting data requires commands and the CLI instead of a UI button2020-05-03
- Found the database unusable in practice, so the commenter switched back to relational databases2019-03-27
- Creating an index on a running server crashes it with a segfault2018-12-20
- Hard to debug compared with MySQL or Postgres2018-11-10
- Managing shards is a pain, and mongos processes become hotspots and single points of failure2018-11-07
- Documentation is hard to find, and its search is awful2017-09-22
- Complex queries with multiple $elemMatch become nightmarish to write2017-09-22
- Command line login doesn't work; users must enter the shell and re-authenticate per database2017-09-22
- Embedding relations makes cross-entity queries like listing all tickets per event gnarly2017-07-19
- Hard to tell why access or rate-limit settings block things; debugging takes hours2017-01-11
- GridFS is slow and barely usable for the people using it2016-08-01
- Implicit schemas and ad hoc migration scripts make data hard to understand and maintain2016-06-08
- Query syntax is messy and the documentation is hard to read2016-06-07
- Complex queries get weird and messy, and sort ordering is cumbersome to work around2015-11-13
- Authorization setup is unintuitive, requiring careful ordering of steps2015-02-10
- Hard to manage, and needs three shards for only 150GB of data2014-04-18
- Complex queries require ugly JSON, hard to read and needing heavy workarounds2014-03-26
- Replication crashes or stalls, forcing them to delete the entire dataset and restart2014-03-22
- Query syntax has non-obvious problems; JSON-based querying feels counter-intuitive2014-01-08
- Replication bug only shows up after hours of copying, slowing the primary database2013-03-21
- Primary dropped to read-only after a secondary died, due to even-vote arbiter logic2012-12-26
- Poor profiling tools make it hard to diagnose slow queries2012-12-26
- Two drivers with confusing names; new users likely to pick the old unsafe one2012-11-28
- Critical flags are buried in documentation; needs reading everything to make a feature work2012-09-26
- Problems exist and fixes require long complicated workarounds and specialized knowledge2012-09-25
- Default insert call fails silently, so users assume errors are reported when they aren't2012-09-24
- Counterintuitive default buried deep in docs, so users lose data unknowingly2012-09-24
- Default behaviour is completely counter-intuitive, so users get surprised by it2012-09-24
- Dangerous defaults like silent write failures and safety off, with no clear warning2012-05-16
- Writes can silently fail unless developers explicitly request write acknowledgement2011-11-07
- Duplicate tag can't be deleted; errors fail silently unless developer knows to check last_error2011-08-13
- Typing JSON queries is painful for humans; summarizing a column requires awkward map-reduce JavaScript2011-07-29