Chapter 2: mLab is becoming a part of MongoDB Atlas

[tima101]

• migrate sandbox and production DBs to Atlas or elsewhere (elsewhere preferred)
• change tutorials and screenshots inside book's content

[YuriGor]

elsewhere preferred

Do you know something is wrong with Atlas?

[tima101]

@YuriGor Haven't researched Atlas but prefer smaller, private companies. Something like Zeit for hosting apps.

[tima101]

@YuriGor Here are a few thoughts.

I just deployed this app https://github.com/async-labs/saas on MongoDB Atlas, AWS, M10 cluster, us-west-1. I did not do benchmarking but for the same app, DB region, my location, and internet speed - server-side rendered pages load a bit faster with the above MongoDB Atlas cluster ($65/month) compared to dedicated mLab cluster ($180/month).

UX/UI/simplicity/intuition is worse at MongoDB Atlas compared to mLab, I guess that they are more focused on Enterprise level customers.

Since their stock soared recently, I bet they will keep buying competitors and making open source code harder to use for small companies.

---

Collection UI:

[YuriGor]

Did you see scalegrid.io?

[tima101]

@YuriGor Much friendlier UX/UI and performance is good.

At the Scalegrid's dashboard:

• I could not find any UI to create DB user. (EDIT: finally found it)
• No UI to edit collection or document.
• There is no unique URL for individual DB and collection, I have to click 3-4 times to see a list of collections in particular DB.

Can you confirm?

[YuriGor]

Can't confirm, sorry, I didn't try it, since I have no my own cloud environment.
I just found people talk about them, and it's an interesting offer to use your own cloud for mongoDB.
Also note, scalegrid compares itself wit mLab, Atlas , Compose and ObjectRocket

[YuriGor]

I also found nice mongo UI
https://github.com/mongo-express/mongo-express
it's an express-based web admin interface and can also be used as an express middleware, so may be it makes sense to integrate it into builderbook's admin ui?
Or just install as dev dependency of the project and use standalone.
It uses clear URL convention, so it will be easy to mention direct URL's in the book's text.

Using dbaas's ui for admin tasks is ok, but for development purposes it's more comfortable to use something locally.

This is screenshots how I connected to my mLab test collection:

As expected, works much faster than mLab's ui.

[tima101]

Note to self, we should update the book's content in Q1 2019 when mLab shuts down. So far I am happy about MongoDB Atlas.

[tima101]

@klyburke @YuriGor @delgermurun I replaced mLab instructions with MongoDB Atlas instructions. Changes are live at:
https://builderbook.org/books/builder-book/server-database-session-header-and-menudrop-components#database

[kvsm]

Think you also can update the readme where this issue is referenced now then ;)

[tima101]

@kvsm Good point, done.