This document discusses Meteor and MongoDB as used in a case study of the Gander email triage application. Key points include: - Meteor is a JavaScript framework that includes client and server functionality and uses MongoDB as its default database. - The Gander app was developed using Meteor to take advantage of its reactivity, easy data syncing, and hot code pushes. - While Meteor made prototyping easy and provided a nice pub/sub model, the presenter notes it is still a work in progress and has some performance and feature limitations compared to MongoDB. - In conclusion, the presenter believes Meteor shows great potential despite current limitations, and recommends trying it for prototype applications.

1. Meteor & Mongo, a Case Study
Presented by: David Wihl

2. What is Meteor?
• a 14 month old very ambitious JavaScript
framework
• Include client and server side
• Uses Mongo as default / only persistence

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

4. Gander
• Next-gen mobile email triage client
• Hoped to use HTML5 to be multiplatform
Ref: http://www.emailmonday.com/mobile-email-usage-statistics

5. Gander Demo

6. 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

7. Gander Architecture

8. 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

9. 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

10. Not so Goodness
• Work in progress: 0.6.3 < 1.0
• Performance
– cf. findOne
• Missing Mongo features, e.g Replica set

11. 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

12. Aggregation Example

13. 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?

14. Learn More
• www.meteor.com
• http://www.discovermeteor.com/
• http://www.ripariandata.com/blog/meteor-resources
• SO, Google Groups (meteor-core, meteor-
talk), Google+

15. 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?

16. 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