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Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

realm.io

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Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

#21
post #2

These 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) o…

Well, I'm not sure about the pricing, but according to this page (https://realm.io/products/realm-mobile-platform/) you can host the mobile platform on-premises.

Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

#22
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work on PouchDB, in terms of those points: "great client-side performance": PouchDB is more than fast enough for most use cases, its just a wrapper over indexedDB. (there are areas we can improve, particularly performance of map reduce / mango queries). "native models that are extremely easy to use": Not sure what that means, PouchDB and CouchDB use json, its native and easy to use in JavaScript "conflict-free sync…

A bit OT, but I have to compliment the person who wrote the docs[1] for PouchDB. They're quite entertaining and easy to understand. Well done! [1]: https://pouchdb.com/guides/

Thanks, I'm that person. :) I tried to write it as a "missing manual" for Couch/Pouch, and had a lot of fun in the process! It needs some updates for newer stuff, though: pouchdb-find, custom builds, Chrome DevTools storage UI improvements, etc.

Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

#25

I found Realm to be very easy to use with React Native. I had trouble using the other tools to save data inside my React Native apps. Anyone else been in the same situation?

I'm using it in my React Native app. Pretty happy with it so far. Haven't tried anything else, as Realm looked like the best choice at when I was selecting the data store for the app.

Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

#26
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you explain this statement: "There’s tons of stuff CouchDB sync doesn’t support that end up being a huge problem with mobile apps" You lay it out there and then talk about what Realm adds, but never what Couch lacks. And are you including PouchDB in your evaluation of CouchDB for "Client-Side Performance"? As I understand PouchDB is performant, uses JSON (pretty much the definition of "Native Models"), and allows…

I think you're misunderstanding what "Native Models" means in the context of iOS work. Saying that a database uses JSON immediately, to many ios devs, recalls years of writing very fragile json serialization code. Looking through CouchDB's iOS example apps confirms that yes, basically everything that isn't a string or int has to be serialized into JSON. That's a pretty enormous annoyance, and incorporates a lot of additional cognitive overhead when dealing with data that Realm simply handles properly for iOS from the beginning.

I'm deeply relieved to see that they're launching something that does something about the fragile ios architectures built around JSON. It's similar to what they did with their mobile database: they actually listened to what mobile devs found annoying, and then they built something that completely sidestepped all the fragility problems that emerge when you wrap sqlite with an ORM. Instead, they made an approach that fit within our workflow, as opposed to taking us further from it.

Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

#27

So this is like alternative to Firebase? How different is their offering?

Christian from Realm here. Main differentiators are probably:

- Realm is self-hosted compared to Firebase which is an MBass.

- Native objects all the way down vs. a JSON structure

Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

#29

Can someone explain why use Realm, or CouchDB, over SQLite?

Speaking from Realm's side, the primary benefits most developers give are:

- Object-based: not an ORM

- Speed: Realm is quite fast and in some cases faster than SQLite

- Ease-of-use: a lot less boilerplate code and a simple threading model make it easy to get going with.

Re: Realm Mobile Platform – Realtime Sync Plus Fully Open Source Database

#30
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Can you explain this statement: "There’s tons of stuff CouchDB sync doesn’t support that end up being a huge problem with mobile apps" You lay it out there and then talk about what Realm adds, but never what Couch lacks. And are you including PouchDB in your evaluation of CouchDB for "Client-Side Performance"? As I understand PouchDB is performant, uses JSON (pretty much the definition of "Native Models"), and allows…

The things Realm adds are what CouchDB lacks. Those things are essentials from a certain point of view.
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