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I am trying to decide between two development firms. One wants to go with Parse while the other wants to build a backend. I would like to get feedback and reasons why building a backend or using a BaaS such as Parse, Stackmob is better in terms of scalability and performance.
For example let's use SnapChat a highly used app that handles millions of users and data requests. What would happen if a newly created app were to experience a large increase in users and data request. Would the backend be able to handle this? Would I be looking to have it fixed shortly after the increase in users?
Something like Parse.com gives you a lot of value for very little capital investment. With BaaS, all of the gory details of infrastructure management are hidden. Deployment, system capacity issues, system availability, system security, database administration and a myriad of other task simply go away when using a good BaaS. Parse.com for instance, uses Amazon Web Services and elastic load balancing to dynamically add more capacity to the system as usage increases. This is the nirvana of capacity management.
Parse.com is a special kind of BaaS. Parse.com's intended purpose is to be a light-weight back-end back-end for mobile apps. I believe Parse.com is a very good mobile backend-as-a-service (MBaaS - link to a Forrester article on the subject).
That said, there are times when Parse.com is not the right solution. Estimate the number of users for the application and the number of HTTP requests and average user would send in a day. Parse.com charges by the number of transactions. The Pro Plan has these limits:
15 million HTTP requests per month
Burst limit of 40 requests per second
Many small transactions can result in a higher cost to the app owner. For example, if there are 4,500 users, each sending 125 HTTP requests to Parse.com per day, then you are already looking at 16,850,000 requests every 30 days. Parse.com also offers a higher level of service called Parse Enterprise. Details about this plan are not published.
The services provided by a BaaS/MBaaS save much time and energy on the part of the application developer, but impose some constraints. For example, the response time of Parse.com might be too slow for your needs. Unless you upgrade to their Enterprise plan, you have no control over response times. You currently have no control over where your app is hosted (Parse apps are presently run out of Amazon's data centers in Virginia, I believe).
The BaaS providers I have looked at do not provide quality-of-service metrics. Even if they did, there is no community agreement on what metrics would be meaningful. You just get what you get and hope it is good enough for your needs.
An application is a good candidate for an MBaaS if :
It is simple or the application logic can run entirely on the client (phone, tablet...)
It is impossible to estimate the number of users or the number of users could be huge.
You don't want a big upfront capital investment.
You don't want to hire infrastructure specialists to handle capacity/security/data/recovery/network engineering.
Your application does not have strict response time requirements.
Parse's best use case is the iPhone developer who wrote a game and needs to store the user's high scores, but knows nothing about servers. That said, complex application like Hipmunk are using Parse. Have a look at Parse.com's portfolio of case studies. Can you imagine your application in that portfolio or is it very different from those apps?
Even if a BaaS is not the right solution, a PaaS or IaaS might be. Look at Rackspace and AWS. In this day and age, buying hardware and running a data center is tough to justify.
BaaS providers like apiomat or parse have to handle the requests of thousands of apps. Every app can have lots of users there. The providers are forced to make the system absolutely secure and scalable because if there are any issues about one of those points it will be the end of their business... Building scalable secure backends on your own is not as easy a you would expect. Those companys mentioned above have invested some man-years in that.
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I'm sorry since I'm new to this.. I'm currently working on my startup which basically like food delivery system and I used Flutter for my app. I learned Flutter using Firebase as a backend. However, there are many sources that recommend use MongoDB as a backend database which I have zero knowledge about it. But I think that MongoDB just only offer for database crud operation. So I think for the database crud operation my app should use MongoDB. However, I think MongoDB is quite complicated when it involves authentication. So, which is better approach for me? should I use Firebase for authentication and MongoDB as the database or is it better to use only one platform for the backend whether its a Firebase or MongoDB? If I mix these two, does it will affect the pricing? Is there any ways that can make me clear which to choose.
MongoDB is an open source NoSQL database management program, which is quite useful for working with large sets of distributed data. It is mostly useful for big data applications and other processing jobs involving data that doesn't fit well in a rigid relational model.
It is an absolutely right approach to use Firebase Auth for just login or signup and the rest on MongoDB. There are 2 ways you can implement the Firebase Auth:
1. Using the SDK provided by Firebase
2. Using the Admin Auth API
You may select any of the above two approaches to save your UID on your custom Backend which might be MongoDB.
Contrarily, Firebase can also be used as backend. It provides the back-end server, a great database and analytics solution, and useful integrations with other Google products. Its free to use, affordable subscription options, wisely designed backend solution guarantees project scalability and data security makes it a great choice for backend.
However, for the vast majority of apps and use-cases, Firebase is an excellent choice. You can start with its free tier and don’t need to worry about maintenance or scalability. It’s great for small to medium developers as it allows them to lower initial costs while focusing on providing the best user experience.
When working on a heavy real-time app like chat, or some other highly collaborative experience, Firebase is still an option, though it might be a bit pricey.
However, the recommendation is always to consider your budget, the required feature set, and how much maintenance you’re willing to do on your own before making a decision.
You might also refer to this documentation, which will guide you with the pros and cons of choosing Firebase as backend.
Flutter: can I mix Firebase Auth with Mongodb Databases?
Check this similar post. If you still have doubts, feel free to ask.
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I'm creating an application (web application) that needs to consume data (update client transactions) from a Kafka broker, but I'm not sure whats the best way to approach this.
I can think of three different scenarios to process each update:
Install the Kafka consumer directly in my app, then I can just start another instance of it (I'm using docker, so another container) and make the required updates there (I think this is the fastest one).
Create a separate service that consumes from Kafka and make the required updates in the app database. It seems to be pretty much the same as option 1, but a smaller app and more maintenance (2 apps instead of 1).
Create a separate service that consumes from Kafka and sends the updates to a REST endpoint in my app. It seems this would be a tiny service, very specific and the process remains in the app; but the app will receive more requests.
So, which are the pros/cons of each solution? Are all of them valid or some of them are a complete no? What drawbacks/risks should I be aware of?
I'm not looking just for a recommendation, I am more interested in understanding which solution works best for a given scenario.
Thank you.
With 3 you are splitting your application into multiple services. When you distribute your code across multiple services, you increase the level of indirection. The more indirection you have in your codebase, the harder it is for one person to work across the entire codebase because they have to keep more things in their head, and working across network boundaries requires a lot more code than working across files, and finally it's harder to debug across a network API.
Now, this doesn't mean that it's bad to split your application into multiple services. Doing so will help you scale your application as you can scale only the pieces that need scaling. Perhaps more importantly, splitting your application into multiple services makes it easier for more people to work on the codebase at the same time, since they have to adhere to the API contracts between the services, and are less likely to be working on the same files at the same time.
So 3 is a good choice if you have scaling issues, either for load on your application, or the number of developers that will work on it.
1 is a good choice if you want to move as quickly as possible and can put off scaling concerns for some time.
2 is the worst of both worlds. Your two services will be coupled by the database schema and will be sharing the same database instance. The separation of code means that you have extra indirection, the database schema coupling means that you won't fully get the people scaling benefits, and since most applications are bottlenecked by the database, the sharing of the db instance will deprive you of scaling independently for performance.
Personal rule-of-thumb -
If you have control of the REST API code, then the first one.
If the API has specific validation before reaching the database, dont do the second one unless you plan on copying that code into the consumer. If you want to write directly to a database, then Kafka Connect is the suggested framework for that, not a plain consumer, anyway
If you dont control the API code (its a third-party API), then you are left with option 3
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I'm tasked with investigating for our firm a full-stack solution where we'll be using a NoSQL database backend. It'll most likely be fed from a data warehouse and/or operational data store of some type in near-realtime (hopefully :). It will be used mainly by our mobile and web applications via REST.
A few requirements/assumptions:
It will be read-only (in the near term) and consumed by clients in REST format
It has to be scalable
Fast response time
Enterprise support - or if lacking actual support, something industry proven if open-source (basically management wants to hold
someone accountable if something in the stack fails)
Minimal client data transformations - i.e: data should be stored in as close to ready-to-use format as possible
Service API Management of some sort will most likely be needed (eg: 3scale)
Services will be used internally, but solution shouldn't prevent us from exposing them externally as a longterm goal
Micro-services are preferable (provided sufficient API management is in place)
We have in-house expertise in Java and Grails for our mobile/portal solutions
Some of the options I was tossing around were:
CouchDB: inherently returns REST - no need for translation layer - as
long as clients speak REST, we're all good
MongoDB: need a REST layer in between client and DB - haven't found a widely used one based on my investigation (the ones on Mongo's site all seem in their infancy - i.e: RestHeart)
Some questions I have:
Do I need an appserver? Or any layer in between the client and DB
for performance/caching reasons? I was thinking a reverse-proxy like
nginx would be a good idea for this?
Why not use CouchDB in this solution if it supports REST out of the box?
I'm struggling with deciding between which NoSQL DB to use, whether or not I need a REST translation layer, appserver, etc. I've read the pros and cons of each and mostly they say go Mongo - but for what I'm trying to do the lack of a mature REST layer is concerning.
I'm just looking for some ideas, tips, lessons learned that anyone out there would be willing to share.
Thanks!
The problem with exposing the database directly to the client is that most databases do not support permission control which is as fine-grained as you want it to be. You often can not allow a client to view and edit its own data while also forbidding it from viewing and editing any data of other users or even worse from the server itself. At least not when you still want a sane database schema.
You will also often find yourself in the situation that you have a document with several fields of which only some are supposed to be under the control of the user and others are not. I can, for example, edit the content of this answer, but I can not edit the time it was posted, the name it was posted under or its voting score. So far I have never seen a database system which can handle permission for individual fields (when anyone has: feel free to post in the comments).
You might think about trying to handle this on the client and just don't offer any user interface for editing said fields. But that will only work in a trusted environment. When you have untrusted users, they could create a clone of your client-sided application which does expose this functionality. There is no way for you to tell the difference between the genuine client and a clone, especially not when you don't have a smart application server (and even then it is practically impossible).
For that reason it is almost always required to have an application server between clients and database which handles authentication and permission management of the clients and only forwards those requests to the persistence layer which are permitted.
I totally agree with the answer from #Philipp. In the case of using CouchDB you will minimum want to use a proxy server in front to enable SSL.
Almost all of your requirements can be fulfilled by CouchDB. Especially the upcoming v2 will give you the "datacenter-needs".
But it's simply very complex to answer what should be the right tool for you purpose. If you get some business model requirements on top like lets say: throttling - then you will definitely need an application server middleware like http://mcavage.me/node-restify/
Maybe it's a good idea to spend some money to professionals like
http://www.neighbourhood.ie/couchdb-support/ ? (I'm not involved)
I'm developing an iOS social networking application that will involve users sharing and rating photos. I've spent about the last year or so on and off teaching myself how to develop in cocoa touch and now I'm ready to get started with the networking aspect of the app. Unfortunately, I have 0 networking / database experience and was wondering if anyone had any good advice on what things to consider and where / how to get started. In all likelihood I'm probably not going to build my own server and instead will go with something like rack space. Any advice would be appreciated.
Getting started to iOS Networking application. Here are the required things:-
You really need good backend developing experience in MySQL and complex database queries Plus experience in developing web services. At the root you need server host for backend and Admin module as you mentioned in question like race space or any other. You need to spend some months with mysql backend,web service and admin module implementation.
For fully functional social networking app your first task will be to manage users. Log in/Sign up will be there. Every user can post his status and can comment to other user's status.All status posts or comments will have their unique id and relationships to userid's table. May be image uploading and comments on photo will also be there So there will be lots of tables and relationships between them on backend side.
For Social Networking app, amount of work will be bigger on both backend/web service side and iOS side.
This is a pretty abstract question.
Eventually, you're going to have to focus on a particular architecture ( which database, which network technology), but before you do that, you need to get an outline idea of what the available options are and what the strengths and weaknesses of each are.
The server database is probably the easiest, as it doesn't make such a big difference. The choices are an sql database ( mysql, sqllite ....), not an sql database ( nosql, in memory tables) or some higher level abstraction where you can hide the differences and decide later ( core data for example). This may be constrained by your deployment decisions, you'll have more choices of rack options if you go for LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) for example. If you stick with apple kit and use a MacOS X back end, you may have additional options for network architecture ( DistributedObjects for instance.
The network architecture is also a difficult choice from a wide range of choices. There are really dozens of options with lots of different pros and cons. As this is your first foray into this area, I'd count ease of use and availability of help high among your priorities. Here are a few popular technologies you might want to investigate ( in alphabetical order to minimise flammability :) ). DistributedObjects ( apple), JAXP, JSON, RPC, SOAP, XML ( bare, without the soapy bits).
One more question you should ask yourself is "Can you get away with just a database connection, or do you need to do processing on the back end?". If you can, you might be able to get away with just using a remote database and then you only need to learn core data ( which will still keep you busy for a long time).
Once you've decided what technologies you want to use, then you can start learning.
You mentioned using a hosted server. You'll want to be able to run a test server locally. Fortunately almost all the worthwhile options for both database and network technology will run on any unix-like machine, so you can probably use your regular dev machine.
Also bear in mind that some of these choices are religious, so everyone you read will have strong biases ( myself definitely included).
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OpenFeint has a content delivery system for those who want to have IAP support in their apps. You can just embed the purchasable content into the app on distribution but a much more versatile approach is to use a server that delivers the content to the device. OpenFeint charges 15% of your sales to use their service. I believe this is ridiculously high.
I plan on making this service and making it available to anyone but first I want to know what you would think is a fair price. This would come with a simple SDK to interact with the service and download you content but it would also manage Apple payment verification server side. I was thinking 5-8% would be fair but I want to hear your thoughts. Do you have any ideas on ways to make the service stand out amongst others?
TL;DR - What would you be willing to pay for a content delivery service for your IAP feature in you apps? It would also help if you mentioned how big of a studio/company you are behind.
I don't think 15% are too much, if their service is reliable, secure (as in: people can't easily steal content) and fast. There are costs for decent file servers (you'll need multiple to reduce downtime risk), UPS, rent for the place you're storing the servers in, big pipes (best would be multiple as well to reduce the downtime risk), maybe load balancers, development and administration. It's one of those things that might look simple at first sight but once you break down all the requirements to get this job done you'll see there are a lot of costs, actually.
If you take a look at some of the competition you would be facing, e.g. UrbanAirship you are not that far off from what they are charging for a similar service.
One thing you should make sure, is that it requires a rock solid infrastructure on your part, meaning that it will be costly to host. A few percent on or off the price doesn't matter much, if developers can't trust you to deliver the content with something like at least 99.7% certainty (probably higher).
One thing to remember is that developers will also have to pay 30% of their IAP revenue to Apple. This means that for OpenFeint, developers will have to hand over a total of 45% of their revenue. That deosn't leave much to to development, testing, support, etc. if you also want to make a profit in the end.
So, keep your price as low as possible, but high enough to pay the costs of reliable and secure hosting.