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Facebook is closing Parse

blog.parse.com

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Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#263
post #2

Separately, we developed an open-source Parse-compatible API server for Node/Express. https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server This, along with the database migration tools released earlier, allow developers a full migration path to move from Parse hosted data + API to their own infrastructure. Over the weekend, I set up a website & app on a $5 DigitalOcean box running Parse and Mongo locally.

Would it be possible to open source the Parse Dashboard? Even if it's just the data browser? I really loved that part of Parse.

They have already did that:

http://blog.parse.com/announcements/introducing-parse-server...

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#266
post #2

Separately, we developed an open-source Parse-compatible API server for Node/Express. https://github.com/ParsePlatform/parse-server This, along with the database migration tools released earlier, allow developers a full migration path to move from Parse hosted data + API to their own infrastructure. Over the weekend, I set up a website & app on a $5 DigitalOcean box running Parse and Mongo locally.

Kudos to Parse for providing an open source path forward. I know a lot of enterprise users who will only look at fully open source stacks, for a variety of reasons. It's good they are giving users a year to migrate. I expect Couchbase Mobile to see a lot of evaluations as this process plays out.

I will be watching to see how the community grows. It looks like the ExportAdapter.js module in parse-server is low hanging fruit to connect to stuff like Couchbase Sync Gateway, which would give access to a multi-vendor ecosystem including IBM and Apache.

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#267

Ugh. This is why you don't build on proprietary stacks like this. I've detailed tonnes of complaints I've had about the platform itself being awkward and buggy in previous HN comments, but this is obviously the #1 reason not to. If Facebook can shut down a service this big, Google or Amazon can too. Moving a VM is (reasonably) easy, but porting an app from proprietary backend X to another is hard.

No, this is just why you should architect your applications so that the backend isn't all over the app, but instead limited to the outskirts. Then you can change providers at will.

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firebase is good for small hackathon-like projects and it gets ugly when your DB grows. Not much optimizations you can do.

[Firebase founder here] We'd love to know what limitations you've run into and how we can do better! Send me a tweet: @startupandrew

Well I love Firebase, but to put it naively, Firebase needs more advanced queries. Even more than usual because it is running 'far' from my backend, so queries from backend are expensive. For example, if there was a way to selectively bring back children of an object etc. I know there are workarounds (and I am doing those) but since Firebase is a DBaaS it needs to account for that when compared to other DBs.

Re: Facebook is closing Parse

#270

And just when I was about to choose between Parse and Google's Firebase. Makes me wonder if Firebase will follow the same path through acquisition, seeming stability, followed by closing? As far as similar open-source systems, it seems like Mozilla's Kinto compares favorably to Parse after it's code is released: http://kinto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/overview.html There's a nice table there comparing the different se…

[Firebase founder here] We're not going anywhere. We have strong backing here at Google and are continuing to make big investments in our platform. You'll see big things from us soon. What makes us different? Firebase is very complementary to Google's other product offerings. Cloud for one, as well as Angular, Polymer, GCM, etc.

Tell that to Wave/Reader/Google TV/etc.

I love me some Firebase, but I don't trust Google for a second. They kill projects off all the time, with no regard to the communities built around them.

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