Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
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Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#2These guys seem to be copying the Parse business model. Which as we all know worked out very nicely for the founders and investors. But very badly for anyone that adopted the Parse framework.
Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#3These guys seem to be copying the Parse business model. Which as we all know worked out very nicely for the founders and investors. But very badly for anyone that adopted the Parse framework.
Very legitimate concern. I use the Realm database in production and it has proven to be a very good decision. Huge advantage over Parse is that the database is open source. If something did happen, the open source community would probably be enough to carry it. If not, it is just a local persistence store, so not hugely difficult to swap out for something else.
This new mobile platform is not (as far as I can tell) open source and has completely unknown pricing beyond the free tier. I certainly wouldn't go near it, even though it looks great.
Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#4These guys seem to be copying the Parse business model. Which as we all know worked out very nicely for the founders and investors. But very badly for anyone that adopted the Parse framework.
Yes and no… I mean it seems like Realm is more focused on an “offline-first” approach by contrast, and is adding this "database-as-a-service platform” for platform agnostic sync.
But, yeah… the usual “what happens if I run into a problem they can’t solve for me [in a timely manner]” or “what if I want to make hard-optimizations” or “what if they break something for me” or “what if they sunset it and I’m building an actual business on top of it” questions apply, of course.
In general, depending on what you’re doing you'd want to MINIMIZE your dependencies on services like this. Luckily, they’ve always seemed focused on database more so than “everything” like Parse was… so it’s only 1 thing, albeit perhaps the most critical one.
Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#5These guys seem to be copying the Parse business model. Which as we all know worked out very nicely for the founders and investors. But very badly for anyone that adopted the Parse framework.
Alexander from Realm here.
We are very aware of how users of Parse got left in the cold when Facebook dropped the project. That is one of the reasons that we choose to offer Realm, not as a service that can be shut down, but rather as a free download that you can self-host on any provider.
That way, even if something happened to us you would still be able to continue running your apps on your own servers. I know that there could still be concerns about how to maintain the software, which is why we have also open sourced the underlying database.
I think most people will agree that we have a pretty good track record of being part of the ecosystem and being there for the developer community, and we very much intend to stay that way.
Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#6Or, you know, support an open source alternative like PouchDB/CouchDB. Sync, conflict resolution, offline-first, and data push are all supported. Not to mention it's a very stable, mature ecosystem.
There are even enterprise-ready setups using CouchDB (like Cloudant) for those that want it.
Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#7Or, you know, support an open source alternative like PouchDB/CouchDB. Sync, conflict resolution, offline-first, and data push are all supported. Not to mention it's a very stable, mature ecosystem. There are even enterprise-ready setups using CouchDB (like Cloudant) for those that want it.
Hi, former Apache CouchDB guy, former Cloudant employee, and former Realm employee here… I (still) love CouchDB but at the end of the day I think its sync is a better fit for server-to-server or web client-to-server use-cases, not mobile-to-server.
There’s tons of stuff CouchDB sync doesn’t support that end up being a huge problem with mobile apps… Here are the top 3 things Realm adds in my opinion: great client-side performance, native models that are extremely easy to use, and conflict-free sync (not conflict resolution!). With my own eyes I’ve seen a generation of developers try CouchDB for mobile apps and then abandon it because of the limitation of its approach. Personally I’m glad to see someone try to bring more options to developers. I think this is the first general-case true sync (à la Google Docs) for mobile, and I hope it will continue to spur more iterations & innovation in other open-source projects as well.
Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#8Switched from CoreData to Realm for a database-heavy communications iOS app. Been using it for about 6 months, so not an expert, but I've done some interesting stuff with it :)
Main benefits I saw:
* faster performance
* simpler multi-threading
* built-in encryption based on ios' commoncrypto (fips 140-2 module)
* fast response time to questions on github (in 3 cases)
* no icloud syncing. I need to check out the new syncing stuff...
* new-ish database so does not have ALL features (e.g., multi-process encrypted access). They appear to work quickly to implement features the community cares about.
* performance is fairly "magical". I understand normal database query performance, realm is different...
* No in-place VACCUUM-type functionality. I've had issues with the realm database file growing unexpectedly large.Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#9These guys seem to be copying the Parse business model. Which as we all know worked out very nicely for the founders and investors. But very badly for anyone that adopted the Parse framework.
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Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database
#10Or, you know, support an open source alternative like PouchDB/CouchDB. Sync, conflict resolution, offline-first, and data push are all supported. Not to mention it's a very stable, mature ecosystem. There are even enterprise-ready setups using CouchDB (like Cloudant) for those that want it.
Adam from Realm, we appreciate being in good company! Our approach differs in building off our object database. We couple this with low-latency sync that only transmits changes and deterministic conflict resolution, making collaborative experiences really easy to build. Still lots to learn while we are in beta, but we also announced open-sourcing our database core today as well!