A comparison of latency for MongoDB and PostgreSQL with a focus on analysis of source code

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to clarify the differences in latency between PostgreSQL and MongoDB as a consequence of their differences in software architecture. This has been achieved through benchmarking of Insert, Read and Update operations with the tool “Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark”, and through source code analysis of both database management systems (DBMSs). The overall structure of the architecture has been researched with Big O notation as a tool to examine the complexity of the source code. The result from the benchmarking show that the latency for Insert and Update operations were lower for MongoDB, while the latency for Read was lower for PostgreSQL. The results from the source code analysis show that both DBMSs have a complexity of O(n), but that there are multiple differences in their software architecture affecting latency. The most important difference was the length of the parsing process which was larger for PostgreSQL. The conclusion is that there are significant differences in latency and source code and that room exists for further research in the field. The biggest limitation of the experiment consist of factors such as background processes which affected latency and could not be eliminated, resulting in a low validity.