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Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

firebase.googleblog.com

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Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#81

Post by davidkhess »

atom-morgan wrote: post #77
davidkhess wrote: post #75

The concern I've always had with Firebase is the lack of a business logic layer between clients and the database. This tends to force the business logic into the clients themselves. Trying to change the schema if you have Firebase clients deployed that can't be instantly upgraded via a browser refresh (i.e. iOS and Android mobile apps) seems an extremely challenging task.

> Trying to change the schema That's the biggest question I have after looking over the site. Coming from the Mongo/Mongoose world what happens in this case?

There used to be a thread in the Firebase Google group about this which is gone now. It still lives on here:

http://grokbase.com/t/gg/firebase-talk/154mr25k86/firebase-m...

That thread is not encouraging.

Edit - found the original thread here:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/firebase-talk/LjHATl...

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#82

Post by mayop100 »

joeblau wrote: post #74

I remember walking into Firebase's offices about 4 years ago when it was 4 people on Townsend St in SOMA in a 300 square foot share office space. It's amazing to see how far they've come; Congrats to the whole team.

Thanks Joe! : ) I remember that day.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#83

Post by jfoster »

WalterSear wrote: post #33
mybigsword wrote: post #19

way too risky to use it for startups. Google may discontinue this project at any time and you have to spend months to rewrite everything for another database. IF google open source it and we will be able to install it on premise and patch without Google, that would be ok. So, I would recommend to use PostgreSQL instead.

Google is dogfooding this in it's other companies, like Nest, fwiw.

They always say that. Google's internal customers also get to continue access after a product has "been retired" (eg. Chrome Web Store still using Google Wallet's web payments) and are in a different position than Google's external customers when it comes to negotiability and notification period.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#85

Post by ginkgotree »

pritambarhate wrote: post #32
mayop100 wrote: post #4

(firebase founder here) I’m thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we’ve been working on over the last 18 months! When I said “big things are coming” in the HN comments back when our acquisition was announced, I was talking about today : ) We’re really excited about these new products. There are some big advances on the development side, with a new storage solution, integrated push messaging, remote config…

Is there an Open Source version of Firebase which we can use on our own hardware if we wish to? Vendor lock-in is the biggest fear I have with Firebase. Like Facebook (Parse), if Google also decides that Firebase is not profitable and decides to close down, how do we run our applications without rewriting? How do we protect ourselves, if Google decides to increase the price of Firebase 3-4 times in a single day? Even…

I'd second Horizon. I've been working with RethinkDB for over a year, and really believe in their commitment to RethinkDb's core technology, and their deep understanding of what is needed to build reactive web apps.

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#86

Post by inlined »

velohx wrote: post #62
plexicle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello there. I love Firebase. Use it every day. The one big request I've always had was to be able to grab the client's IP address on request. Is that possible with this new Firebase and GCE integration? I have many Firebase apps. Most of them have an intermediate server solely for this one reason.

That's a feature I would also really like. I also use an intermediate server (ipify.org) to get the IP address. The only reason I need the IP address is to throttle users. If adjustable throttling was baked into the platform and not require me to write logic to handle it, that would be sweet too.

Is there anything you'd like to use the IP address for beyond throttling?

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#87

Post by messel »

mayop100 wrote: post #4

(firebase founder here) I’m thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we’ve been working on over the last 18 months! When I said “big things are coming” in the HN comments back when our acquisition was announced, I was talking about today : ) We’re really excited about these new products. There are some big advances on the development side, with a new storage solution, integrated push messaging, remote config…

Huge feature set, thanks.

Any news on deeper/more complex queries (chaining, or something like joins without rewriting our data in multiple places)

Or faster queries (server side I've seen some very slow .once calls taking hundreds of ms)?

Also I'd love some tips on how to better scale listener/trigger functions. I have many listeners (server side) and am migrating them to explicit client endpoint point functions to handle it horizontally (more api workers).

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#88

Post by inlined »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #68

Can somebody explain the new Firebase reframing towards GCP? Maybe with another provider analogy? (e.g.,Firebase is to GCP like Parse is(was) to Facebook)

I cover this briefly in my talk today: "Migrate to Firebase" [1]. Google Cloud Platform gives you massively scalable & robust building blocks at the IaaS and PaaS level. You can use these to do just about anything as long as you have the time and expertise. Combining building blocks to follow best practices isn't always trivial, so Firebase offers the next layer higher in the stack. With Firebase you can mix and match pieces that integrate together to be a turn-key backend. We also offer additional services to help you make your app successful once it's been built.

Firebase and Google Cloud Platform play nicely together and we've made sure you can mix and match the pieces you need. E.g. Firebase Storage lets you use Firebase Rules to secure Google Cloud Storage. The new server-side APIs for Firebase are authenticated with the Google's IAM policies.

The two teams are partners and we're excited to be working together.

1. https://events.google.com/io2016/schedule?sid=b4641ff7-0bef-...

Re: Firebase expands to become a unified app platform

#89

Post by dandelany »

mybigsword wrote: post #40
csmajorfive wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's less likely to happen here because Google is investing heavily in building a business around developer services.

I cannot agree with that. Google Cloud services are way too small comparing to AWS or Azure and they don't make a lot of money with it. They can discontinue it easily.

GCS is relatively small today, but it's growing fast, and Google is investing a ton of money and resources into it right now. They've added a bunch of new systems and promised more coming soon. They also just signed a huge deal to host all of Spotify's data. Cloud Services aren't going anywhere, in fact my perception is that Google would like them to replace advertising as their #1 moneymaker.
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