I'm trying to create a back-end in which I can have many users communicate with each other amongst an iPhone app I'm creating. I've tried working with Core Data, Google App Engine, Google Cloud Storage, and Amazon Web Services (RDS & Elastic Beanstalk). Unfortunately, after weeks of trying to get any of this working, none of it will!
I've been trying to get in touch with someone who would know how startups (when they were little) like Instagram, Path, and Pinterest have managed to do this. But everyone out there seems to despise this stuff as much as I'm growing to...
I would love for someone to simply map out EXACTLY how I need to create a back-end database that I can save and query data to and from that many users can see. That means that just SQLite, Core Data, or Parse by itself isn't going to work here!
A tutorial of some kind would be incredible.
First off, technologies like CoreData and sqlite are typically local device storage. Local device storage is not going to get you shared cloud storage.
Parse.com is a fast way for devices to access cloud storage and get going fast. Especially useful for games and other mobile apps to access cloud data via an app id and app key. It's simple storage to avoid creating your own backend if it fills all your needs and requirements.
When you get to a multi-tenant cloud backend where you roll your own services and multiple devices accessing your cloud application you need to look into exposing your web API. Exposing RESTful API over http is great for devices and web clients. Exposing the data as JSON is especially conventient for the web and easily consumed by devices.
Those web service end points in the cloud access some sort of backend storage which is optimized for concurrent access by mutliple clients. This is typically a SQL backend like MySQL, SQLServer etc... or a NoSQL solution like mongodb, couchDB, etc...
Some front end web api technologies to look into:
ASP.net web api
Ruby on Rails
Node.js
etc...
Some back end storage technologies to look into:
SQL: MySQL, SQLServer/Azure SQL, Oracle
NoSQL: MongoDb, CouchDb, Amazon S3 simple storage, etc...
If the data is used by many many multi-tenant clients, the backends can scaled up (larger and larger) or get sharded. Sharding is where the data for multiple users is split into many databases or datastores with some sort of lookup algorithm for requests to find where that users data is stored. The front end web api servers abstract the backend storage.
Finally, you'll end up needing some sort of caching/fast lookup technology (if you're successful :):
Redis: fast in memory storage over sockets
memcached: facebook uses - simple key value in memory caching across many front end servers.
Your question is an open ended up broad question so start by googling many of these terms and technologies.
Each of these links will have resources and tutorials. Get a cloud VM, play with each and decide which fits your needs best. There is no one size fits all solution.
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I'm Cococa programmer, but right now I encountered situation when I can't go any further without smarter people:)
I always used small databases in my applciations. I programmed PHP backend on my own server and it worked good.
Right now I have to switch for something much bigger and I decided to try with Google App Engine, because it is relatively cheap and has great scalability.
I'm so confused with documentation and I really don't know where to start.
My new app will store data (images, videos) as well as database (mysql) in google cloud.
I concluded that for app like that I should use:
Google Cloud Storage for images / viedos etc.
Google Cloud SQL for CRUD operations for users (inserting and fetching personal data)
I would prefer to use JSON api. Then I don't have to write any Java, Python or GO code, right? Only REST requests for Google Cloud SQL...
My question is : Am I thinking correctly? Should I use these two services?
Google App Engine has a feature called "Cloud Endpoints" (Java | Python)
that automatically generates a JSON API similar to the APIs that Google provides for its own services (and also generates client libraries in JavaScript, Obj-C, and Java to invoke those APIs), saving you the trouble of writing the REST API yourself and manually serializing/deserializing the request and, instead, focusing on just the business logic that performs the storage and retrieval operations. So, what I would suggest is that you write the code that reads/writes data into the datastore (and cloud storage), but then use Cloud Endpoints to automatically generate your JSON API and client libraries, rather than manually writing that code.
Your plan seems fine so far. Google Cloud Storage is a great choice for storing a large number of images and movies, and Google Cloud SQL is a great choice for handling smaller, more relational data.
If you're using PHP from app engine, there's built-in support for Google Cloud Storage. See https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/php/googlestorage/
If you're using PHP from your app that lives somewhere else, you could write to the Google Cloud Storage JSON or XML APIs directly, but there's also a PHP library for the Google APIs that might be easier for you to use: https://code.google.com/p/google-api-php-client/
I want to develop a website that will serve millions of pages everyday including the mobile devices. Site will have strong social features and thus would require lots of reads/writes. It will also suggest things to users based on their social behaviors (likes, dislikes etc) and their friends' behaviors. After considering many elements I have come up with
NoSQL (MongoDB or Cassandra) Database. Not sure which one is the right one.
memcached
Varnish or squid for http acceleration
php and python (Not sure if php is that scalable)
nginx or Apache web server
Any recommendations?
There are NoSQL databases that has an integrated web service that can handle much more web requests per second (including database transaction time) compared to traditional web services requesting data from an external data source. Using this kind of solution increases the performance, save a lot of time in implementation and simplify scaling your website.
The recommendation depends on how you plan on implementing the solution: a server side rendering solution or a client rendered solution? Will you have any MVVM style implementation making the communication talkative? Also what server side environment do you have in mind? Microsoft/Linux?
Take a look at Starcounter database that has a web server component integrated into the database engine and see if that could help you.
i am working on a ipad app, i need to write some data to a remote online database , can i do this with out using web service,,, i need some advice,,,
thanx in advance
Technically this is possible, there are remote database drivers for the iPhone platform, for example Flipper.
However, I'd strongly recommend use some kind of "Service" to do your database access. This could be a full SOAP/HTTP WebService, a RESTful Service, or even just a little bit of php that you invoke over http or https. Don't be concerned that developing this "Service" will be lots of work, it need take no more than an hour or two. In fact with a product such as Worklight it took me literally 15 minutes using the Worklight SQL adapter. (Disclaimer I work for IBM, we recently acquired Worklight.)
There are several reasons to prefer using an intermediary service rather than direct access to the DB from the client. Here's a couple:
Scalability. Each user's connection to the DB consumes server side resources, if your app is widely used then you could end up with many tens of thousands of simultaneous connections. The service approach uses Web-facing connections to the phone, using (for example) web containers designed for high numbers of concurrent sessions, and then funnels down to a few database connections. Even very busy web sites tend to use (and reuse) only a small number (a few 10s) of database connections.
Security. It is strongly recommended to avoid making databases directly accessible to the internet. It's a big topic, but if the database contains any kind of valuable data then a pattern of fronting the database by a service greatly reduces vulnerability.
I recommend using the service Parse. Their service is built specifically to solve the iOS/Android backend problem. I just wrote a blog post about them: Parse, The Best Backend for iPhone SDK.
In search of a 'Cloud Content Management System' like http://osmek.com/,
I could not find a single other CCMS that does what I want it to do :)
Basically, what I need is content management without a website frontend attached.
Just basic storage of data, documents, images, etc. etc. with a simple API to access, like Osmek. Just NoSQL or SQL based services won't do, because there can be images or documents attached. And, ofcourse, I'd like to have a backend to manage the data (like a typical CMS does) without writing a backend myself (if it's just the service)
Osmek is great, and it works most awesome in conjunction with Actionscript 3, but I'm just looking / searching for alternatives (if there even are any yet).
I need this form of hosted content management for content-manageing a mobile application.
So the question is: Is there anything else out there that does the same as osmek that you know of? OR, how do you manage application specific content?
Thanks!
I'd encourage you to take a look at Cloud CMS (http://www.cloudcms.com).
Cloud CMS is a JSON content management (CMS) platform built on top of MongoDB with a REST API and drivers for a variety of languages. You just drop in a driver and call methods to query, create, update and delete content.
The platform provides everything you need to power the back-end for mobile and HTML5 applications - from managing your content to managing users and groups, credentials, security tokens (OAuth2), Git-like collaborative workspaces, real-time analytics, activities, data transformations and more.
Everything runs in the cloud on an elastic back-end. It's probably more akin to Parse than a traditional CMS. You just make calls to the APIs. We keep the costs low by letting you only pay for what you use (almost like a utility). You just pay for storage and data transfer.
Disclaimer: I'm one of the founders of Cloud CMS. So I'm a pretty lousy reference in terms of its objective value. However, a couple of us worked at traditional "ECM" companies in the past and we think we've built something that puts a genuine beating on those guys.
Okay, so I'm currently developing an iphone app that I plan to take into production and scale. I'm a bit lost on the whole subject.
What is better to use: core data or sqlite? (as the local DB)
Also, can sqlite be used exclusively to communicate with my remote server as well? At first I thought it could but I've been reading that sqlite isn't great to use on servers that get a massive amount of hits.
I've read that oracle, mysql, or mssql may be better to use on a remote server and that I can communicate with these servers via REST or SOAP.
I plan to be able to both read and write to a remote server. The files transferred will mostly be small data objects and pictures. Speed is of the essence, so I'd like to know which options are my fastest routes. Of course, I want the option to scale and not have performance take too much of a hit as well.
On the subject of Core Data vs sqlite see this question.
SQLite is a small and lite embedded SQL database engine. It's not meant to used in server environments. In general, it's not a good idea to communicate directly over the Internet. It's more common to have some sort of process logic between the client code and the database to do a range of things like validate input, process business logic, security, etc. You can implement this sort of layer in REST, SOAP, or whatever you like. Since your clients will be mobile devices, a http based web service (like REST or SOAP) is a good idea as all mobility platforms have inbuilt API support for http messaging. There are lots and lots of options on the server depending on what type of server you want to setup and run with.
If your new to this, maybe you should read something like 'Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture' by Martin Fowler to get a idea of what sort of design patterns people use to implement the server side layering.