Andreas Braun (MongoDB) on Rethinking Databases
Live from Laracon EU 2026 | Dutch Laravel Foundation Podcast
In this episode, recorded live at Laracon EU 2026, we talk with Andreas Braun, Lead of the PHP Team at MongoDB.
We dive into databases, SQL vs NoSQL thinking, schema design, performance at scale, and how Laravel developers can get started with MongoDB.
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WHAT WE TALK ABOUT
• Andreas’ background in software engineering (Turbo Pascal days!)
• Growing up with SQL — and why he “hates it with a passion” today
• Why developers often choose databases out of habit
• The mental shift from tables to documents
• Why normalization is not always the most efficient solution
• Real-world example: 600 million fuel price records queried in microseconds
• MongoDB vs ElasticSearch
• Choosing technology under time pressure
• Why storage is cheap but CPU time is expensive
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MONGODB VS SQL THINKING
Most developers automatically think in:
• station table
• fuel table
• price report table
That’s normalization thinking.
MongoDB challenges that model:
• Store data in read-optimized structures
• Embed documents instead of splitting everything into tables
• Duplicate data when it improves performance
• Optimize for real-world usage patterns
Key insight:
You don’t join 600 million rows.
You design differently from the start.
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HOW TO START WITH MONGODB (LARAVEL)
Getting started is simple:
Create a MongoDB server
– Local installation
– Or MongoDB Atlas (free tier up to 512MB, no credit card required)
Install the MongoDB PHP extension (driver)
Use the MongoDB CRUD API
– insertOne / insertMany
– find / findMany
– updateOne / updateMany
– deleteOne / deleteMany
In Laravel, use the MongoDB integration that allows you to work with Eloquent while using MongoDB underneath.
You don’t write SQL.
You work with a programmatic API.
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LEARNING RESOURCES
MongoDB University (free courses)
• Introduction to MongoDB
• Schema design patterns
• Laravel getting started course
• Scaling & sharding
• Hosting MongoDB yourself (community edition)
There are also certification paths for PHP developers.
Andreas is currently publishing a blog series on scaling to a billion documents — and is looking for Laravel developers who want to recreate the same challenge in Laravel.
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
Don’t choose databases out of habit.
Don’t normalize by default.
Design for how your application actually reads data.
And don’t spend six months evaluating tools if you need to ship in three weeks.
Sometimes “good enough now” beats “perfect later.”
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Connect with Andreas:
GitHub: https://github.com/alcaeus
LinkedIn: / andreas-b-38b929252
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Dutch Laravel Foundation Podcast
Recorded live at Laracon EU 2026