CouchDB or MongoDB for Lift Web application?

Question

I'm building a web application using Lift (scala) and unsure whether to use CouchDB or MongoDB for the database.

My application will consist of:

• User accounts
• User profiles
• Internal messaging
• Comments
• Postings
• Embedding videos, pictures etc on the app

Which implementation would be better, CouchDB or MongoDB?

Answer 1

While I do think CouchDB is very well suited for Web applications, I have found it not well suited for use with Lift.

Lift makes it hard to do things "the CouchDB way", and I have not found any Lift user using CouchDb in production (please correct me if I am wrong).

Here is my rule:

• if you want to use Lift then use MongoDB
• if you want to use CouchDB then do not use Lift.

Answer 2

I'd go with MongoDB, it tends to be well suited for web applications in general, but of course it depends on your level of experience with both products and how you'll be accessing and querying the data.

Lift can integrate with MongoDB using:

• lift-mongodb: base code and a lightweight ODM library
• lift-mongodb-record: back-end implementation of the Record framework