I have a question regarding the most suitable way to organise datas when your app/product becomes used by more people.
Until now I've coded an Instagram-alike application for iOS which used Firebase to store data.
In particular I used "Firebase Realtime Database" with JSON data format to store all the datas.
My question here is: if I want to code an app which is potentially used by a lot of people, can I still use the same Realtime database way of storing or it's better if I use something else?
In particular I'm thinking about querying speed and sustainability of realtime database with a larger amount of data.
I'm a novice in this field and I don't know so much about Firebase so I'm sorry if my technical descriptions are raw.
Both databases will scale very well. If you have only simple querying needs than RTDB is fine. If your querying requirements are more sophisticated then Firestore. The other major factor is how usage of the two databases is charged for. You need to research that and then work out how the two cost models will work for your use case.
Related
I have a simple question. I am building a Instagram clone app and I want to show each user to their friends. Also they can see the friends list. I am using cloud firestore approach. However I'm a little bit confused about how to store user's friends data? . Should I create a new collection as friendsList
or should I hold the data in users collection as a friends array ?
In the first approach I will create the user data again when some user adds a new friend. Am a new for both firestore and NoSql I would be thankful If anyone can explain.
I'm not going to "answer" as such, but explain the philosophy of NoSQL a bit. The best approach is to design your queries first (i.e. what do you want to get from the database), then design your database schema to make getting the results of those queries efficient and affordable. There are many ways to organize data; you want to take advantage of NoSQL "schema-less" to make your schema match your needs, not the other way around.
Other things to keep in mind: DRY is less critical to NoSQL. Static data (i.e. never or rarely changes) can be stored in multiple places (i.e. a friend's name might be in their profile and in a friends-list) if that saves reads & writes (which are the biggest factor in costs).
So how to organize your database? I don't know; what do you want your database to do?
I should read to this tutorial.This tutorial about is MySql but not important for me if you understand this tutorial you can apply firebase.
I leave a tip below.
I have 50-100mb dataset that users need to have access to. It's static, so doesn't make sense to host a server for it. There are two kinds of operations I'll perform on the data:
Reading objects by unique ObjectId. Each object is ~3kb.
Full text search through ~300.000 strings. Each string is 4-60 characters.
I'm considering to store data as JSON files. The 300k strings will be stored separately. I'll use https://github.com/nextapps-de/flexsearch or something similar to perform search over it. I've done something similar before with ~10mb dataset back in 2016. I used just regex search and it was working flawlessly.
Are there reasons to use RealmDB, SQLite, PouchDB or something else instead of just JSON?
I wish I did this question an year ago...
In the office I currently work we tried creating an app by using PouchDB and react native, we basically saw PouchDB as an advantage because it wouldn't require our API to send all data over and over again on every refresh triggered by the user, it would only send the data that changed based on the client's checkpoint. As the data in the server was quite heavy (around 6k entries with more than 200 attributes each) we tried at all costs to go easy on the client's data plan.
Months after this implementation was in place we implemented a search functionality with many different options for sorting and filtering, and not only we had to throw away all our implementation of PouchDB, but we had to start from scratch replacing all its logic with indexed JSON values. PouchDB performance was extremely slow, it was taking more than 5 seconds or so to retrieve results, and we just couldn't afford to delay this time on our scope.
In the end we accomplished to reach a very quick search running flex search inside our indexed JSONs. Don't do the same mistake we did, PouchDB costed us too much budget and precious time. It was a terrible choice.
Unfortunately I cannot offer proof or more details from a reputable source, I can only share the own personal terrible experience I had when I thought we were reaching the end of a project and we had to start from scratch. it was a mess.
Oh boy, a bountied, opinion based question!
I have about 5 years experience with pouchDB specifically, a little with SQLite. I have but a cursory experience with RealmDB - I tried it out and decided it was not a good fit for my hybrid/mobile needs.
pouchDB exceeds in on one area hands down - synchronization/replication just like it's big brother CouchDB. Providing interaction with an offline database that synchronizes with a remote database is huge for many mobile apps. pouchDB is schemaless, leveraging JSON documents. With pouchDB one may choose among several data stores via adapters. As there can be quota headaches1 for your data size the right choice may likely be the SQLite adapter. pouchDB does not support full text search.
SQLite is what its name implies - a relational database, requiring a schema. An advantage to SQLite is platform support and the size of the database is not subject to quota headaches like web storage (e.g. IndexedDB). SQLite supports full text search, and apps can deploy with a canned database.
Between pouchDB and SQLite lies RealmDB - it is a schema based object database that supports synchronization/replication. Like pouchDB, it does not support full text search.
Now your requirements
Looking up object by id
300k static text
full-text search
I read 'static' to mean immutable.
Since your data does not change and full-text search is required, pouchDB and RealmDB would not be good choices. If there is a requirement to enhance, remove or add to the data, either would make sense as changes to data on a single server would replicate changes to the local database, practically in a seamless fashion.
SQLite might be a reasonable choice since it supports search and it is possible to deploy a canned database with the app. However, SQLite can be slow in hybrid apps.
So,
pouchDB and RealmDB would be massive overkill and not a good fit.
SQLite would add a fair bit of complexity.
For your specific requirements I'd stay on your path, though I have a care as it appears flexsearch loads its index into memory - if its performance returns some penalty then SQLite, with it's ability to deploy a canned database and providing a search facility may prove a reasonable trade off versus complexity.
Good luck!
1 Quota Headaches
I would say it really just depends on whether you want and NEED to leverage the power of relational queries. Because your data is never changing I would use JSON unless you are trying to perform complex comparisons between your data. In your case it sounds like you are just going to be searching for the particular ObjectId so JSON is your best bet especially because you are saying you won't need to change the data later.
If you organize your JSON so that your ObjectId are in a sorted order you will easily be able to search quickly.
Edit: After posting the question I thought I could also make this post a quick reference for those of you needs a quick peek at some of the differences between these two technologies which might help you decide on one of them eventually. I will be editing this question and adding more info as I learn more.
I have decided to use firebase for the backend of my project. For firestore is says "the next generation of the realtime database". Now I am trying to decide which way to go. Realtime database or cloud firestore?
Billing:
At a first glance, it looks like firestore charges per number of results returned, number of reads, number of writes/updates etc. Real-time database charges based on the data transmitted. The number of read-write operations is irrelevant. They both also charge on the data stored on the google servers too (I think in this respect firestore is cheaper one). Why am I mentioning this price point? Because from my point of view, although it might a lower weight, it is also a point to consider while choosing the one over the other.
Scaling:
Cloudstore seems to scale horizontally seamlessly. I think this is not possible with the real-time database.
Edit:
In the real-time database, you need to shard your data yourself using multiple databases. And you can only do this if you are in BLAZE pracing plan.
ref: https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/usage/sharding
Performance & Indexing:
Another thing is the real-time database data structure is different in both. The real-time database stores the data as a JSON object in any way we structure them. Firestore structures the data as collections and documents. And hence the querying also changes between the two.
I think firestore does auto indexing which increases the read performance greatly too (which will decrease read performance). I am not sure if this is also the case with the real-time database.
Edit:
The real-time database does not automatically index your data. You need to do it yourself after a solid inspection of your data and your needs.
ref:https://firebase.google.com/docs/database/security/indexing-data
What other differences can you think of?
What would be (or has been) your choice for different types of projects?
Do you still go with the real-time database or have you migrated from that to the firestore? If so why?
And one last thing. How would you compare the SDKs of these two?
Thanks a lot!
What other differences can you think of?
what i think, ok. I use realtime-database for 6 months experience and difference is, firestore easy for sorting data. As Example, i want to retrieving user name based timestamp.
Query firstQuery = firestore.collection("Names").orderBy("timestamp", Query.Direction.DESCENDING).limit(10); // load 10 names
What would be (or has been) your choice for different types of
projects?
For me, Realtime-Database for Data Streaming when i work with Arduino, i want to store Drone Speed.
And Firestore for SMART OFFICE, like Air Conditioner, or light-room and Enterprise like Inventory Quantities, etc.
Do you still go with the real-time database or have you migrated from
that to the firestore? If so why?
still go with real-time because i need TREE for displaying streaming data strucure instead of query TABLE like firestore.
I have seen videos and read the documentation of Cloud firestore, from Google Firebase service, but I can't figure this out coming from realtime database.
I have this web app in mind in which I want to store my providers from different category of products. I want perform a search query through all my products to find what providers I have for such product, and eventually access that provider info.
I am planning to use this structure for this purpose:
Providers ( Collection )
Provider 1 ( Document )
Name
City
Categories
Provider 2
Name
City
Products ( Collection )
Product 1 ( Document )
Name
Description
Category
Provider ID
Product 2
Name
Description
Category
Provider ID
So my question is, is this approach the right way to access the provider info once I get the product I want?
I know this is possible in the realtime database, using the provider ID I could search for that provider in the providers section, but with Firestore I am not sure if its possible or if this is right approach.
What is the correct way to structure this kind of data in Firestore?
You need to know that there is no "perfect", "the best" or "the correct" solution for structuring a Cloud Firestore database. The best and correct solution is the solution that fits your needs and makes your job easier. Bear also in mind that there is also no single "correct data structure" in the world of NoSQL databases. All data is modeled to allow the use-cases that your app requires. This means that what works for one app, may be insufficient for another app. So there is not a correct solution for everyone. An effective structure for a NoSQL type database is entirely dependent on how you intend to query it.
The way you are structuring your data looks good to me. In general, there are two ways in which you can achieve the same thing. The first one would be to keep a reference of the provider in the product object (as you already do) or to copy the entire provider object within the product document. This last technique is called denormalization and is a quite common practice when it comes to Firebase. So we often duplicate data in NoSQL databases, to suit queries that may not be possible otherwise. For a better understanding, I recommend you see this video, Denormalization is normal with the Firebase Database. It's for Firebase Realtime Database but the same principles apply to Cloud Firestore.
Also, when you are duplicating data, there is one thing that needs to keep in mind. In the same way, you are adding data, you need to maintain it. In other words, if you want to update/delete a provider object, you need to do it in every place that it exists.
You might wonder now, which technique is best. In a very general sense, the best way in which you can store references or duplicate data in a NoSQL database is completely dependent on your project's requirements.
So you should ask yourself some questions about the data you want to duplicate or simply keep it as references:
Is the static or will it change over time?
If it does, do you need to update every duplicated instance of the data so they all stay in sync? This is what I have also mentioned earlier.
When it comes to Firestore, are you optimizing for performance or cost?
If your duplicated data needs to change and stay in sync in the same time, then you might have a hard time in the future keeping all those duplicates up to date. This will also might imply you spend a lot of money keeping all those documents fresh, as it will require a read and write for each document for each change. In this case, holding only references will be the winning variant.
In this kind of approach, you write very little duplicated data (pretty much just the Provider ID). So that means that your code for writing this data is going to be quite simple and quite fast. But when reading the data, you will need to load the data from both collections, which means an extra database call. This typically isn't a big performance issue for reasonable numbers of documents, but definitely does require more code and more API calls.
If you need your queries to be very fast, you may want to prefer to duplicate more data so that the client only has to read one document per item queried, rather than multiple documents. But you may also be able to depend on local client caches makes this cheaper, depending on the data the client has to read.
In this approach, you duplicate all data for a provider for each product document. This means that the code to write this data is more complex, and you're definitely storing more data, one more provider object for each product document. And you'll need to figure out if and how to keep up to date on each document. But on the other hand, reading a product document now gives you all information about the provider document in one read.
This is a common consideration in NoSQL databases: you'll often have to consider write performance and disk storage vs. reading performance and scalability.
For your choice of whether or not to duplicate some data, it is highly dependent on your data and its characteristics. You will have to think that through on a case-by-case basis.
So in the end, remember that both are valid approaches, and neither of them is pertinently better than the other. It all depends on what your use-cases are and how comfortable you are with this new technique of duplicating data. Data duplication is the key to faster reads, not just in Cloud Firestore or Firebase Realtime Database but in general. Any time you add the same data to a different location, you're duplicating data in favor of faster read performance. Unfortunately in return, you have a more complex update and higher storage/memory usage. But you need to note that extra calls in Firebase real-time database, are not expensive, in Firestore are. How much duplication data versus extra database calls is optimal for you, depends on your needs and your willingness to let go of the "Single Point of Definition mindset", which can be called very subjective.
After finishing a few Firebase projects, I find that my reading code gets drastically simpler if I duplicate data. But of course, the writing code gets more complex at the same time. It's a trade-off between these two and your needs that determines the optimal solution for your app. Furthermore, to be even more precise you can also measure what is happening in your app using the existing tools and decide accordingly. I know that is not a concrete recommendation but that's software development. Everything is about measuring things.
Remember also, that some database structures are easier to be protected with some security rules. So try to find a schema that can be easily secured using Cloud Firestore Security Rules.
Please also take a look at my answer from this post where I have explained more about collections, maps and arrays in Firestore.
I have events in firebase database table where each event has certain fields. One of the field is event_type. What I want to achieve is to be able to visualize in graphical form, how many events of each type comes daily?
How do I do something like that in firebase database?
Q1. Is it possible to directly do this in firebase?
Q2. Do I need to move data to some other datasource (like Big query) and setup dashboard there?
It is definitely possible to create a dashboard with aggregate data directly on the Firebase Realtime Database. But you'll have to take a different approach than with e.g. BigQuery.
With relational databases, you'll create a dashboard by running aggregation queries. For example to show how many events of each type, you'll run something like SELECT type, COUNT(*) FROM events GROUP BY type.
The Firebase Realtime Database (and most NoSQL databases) don't have such a GROUP BY operation, not a COUNT() method. So that means that you'd have to load all data into your dashboard, and group/count it there, which is quite expensive. That why on NoSQL databases you'll typically keep a running count for each type in the database and update that on every write operation. While this puts an overhead on each write operation, the dashboard itself suddenly becomes very simply when you do this. For an example of a simple counter, see the function-samples repo.
This approach only works if you know up front what counters (and other aggregates) you want to show in the dashboard. If that isn't the case, many developers use the nightly backups from the Realtime Database to ingest the data into another system that lends itself more to exploratory querying, such as BigQuery.
Either approach can work fine. The right approach is a matter of your exact use-case (e.g. do you know the exact data you want in the dashboard, or are you still figuring that out?) and what you're most comfortable with.