Meteor & Mongo, a Case StudyPresented by: David Wihl

What is Meteor?

• a 14 month old very ambitious JavaScript framework

• Include client and server side• Uses Mongo as default / only persistence

Meteor Highlights

• Reactivity• Super easy data sync• Client and server consistency• Hot Code Pushes• Smart packages / NPM happiness

Gander

• Next-gen mobile email triage client• Hoped to use HTML5 to be multiplatform

Ref: http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics

Gander Demo

Our Experience with Meteor

• Started as UX prototype only in Sept• After security added in Oct, added real users• By no means experts at Mongo• Pushing platform pretty hard

Gander Architecture

We Mongo

• Centerpiece of our app• Myriad of hosting and on prem options

– Currently using MongoHQ + EC2

• Changed schema numerous times• Good for semi-structured data like email

Goodness of Meteor

• Easy to prototype• Symmetric on client and server (minimongo)• Nice pub/sub model, DDP• Great bunch of guys, moving quickly• Easy deploy, wrapped Mongo• All open source

Not so Goodness

• Work in progress: 0.6.3 < 1.0• Performance

– cf. findOne

• Missing Mongo features, e.g Replica set

Here Be Dragons…

• Doesn’t use Mongo security model• Uses Fibers to wrap async node calls

– Can still access Mongo directly

• Young MVC Design Patterns• Need to host Mongo elsewhere than

meteor.com for direct access

Aggregation Example

Meteor Corp Biz Model

• Eventually enter the hosting biz via Galaxy• How will that relate to Mongo’s advanced

options and current hosting choices?• What about on-prem?

Learn More

• www.meteor.com• http://www.discovermeteor.com/• http://www.ripariandata.com/blog/meteor-resources

• SO, Google Groups (meteor-core, meteor-talk), Google+

Questions for the Audience

• Should we store attachments in S3 or GridFS?• What gotchas exist in a REST front end to

Mongo? Node.js or Rails?• Anyone used Mongo 2.4 full text search yet?

Conclusions

• In our opinion, Meteor is the best JS framework out there

• Symmetric data is super useful• It’s a work-in-progress with great potential• Worth trying some prototype apps