Firebase Vs MongoDB - Compare the best databases with all the Pros & Cons & Examples. Choose Best database & Cloud solution for Real time app development.

I’ve seen enough entrepreneurs make the same mistake over and over again. For instance, they choose technologies for their MVP app or complete mobile app solutions without understanding the back-end development needs, especially the cloud storage and database.In short, you need to understand the technical usage of every database and then decide the one that’s right for your product. In this blog, we will be comparing Firebase Vs MongoDB databases for the same.

But before going into the technical comparisons, you need to understand the basics of databases.

Why Knowing Your Technology Stack is Most Important?

Developing a successful app isn’t easy. To reach a broad audience, you’ll need to consider your iOS, Android, and web apps users; and to build for these platforms. Further, you’ll need secure cloud storage with a strong and secure database to store data and support these apps.

You aim to get more users, hopefully, lots of users (like millions) which means your cloud storage and the database will have to scale. Assuming you have solved your scaling problems, you have to find more ways to get new users. Further, this will increase your website and mobile app traffic, which in turn needs more backend technology scaling.

Oh no, your app is crashing and causing a service meltdown, and you haven’t even made a dime yet.

Sounds like a nightmare, right?

Do you know what went wrong? It’s your database.

When you design apps for iOS, Android, or the web; the database is a huge deal, so if not designed or set up correctly, it could become a big problem.

The most common issues with databases are:

• Designing a database from scratch is very tricky, given that you need to make an easy path for scalability.
• It consumes a lot of bandwidths from trafficking between the database and application front-end.
• Database hostage is a very tough and costly task for new startups in the making.
• Managing your own authentication system becomes tricky and complicated if you lack database expertise.

The solution to all these issues is to choose the best database from the start. But you first need to learn about different databases.

Quick Lesson on Database Types

SQL and NoSQL are the only two database categories that you need to think about:

SQL

MySQL is the leading SQL relational database which is compatible to create both small and large size application. Most importantly, In the SQL database, the data is stored in a linear fashion in tables like the excel spreadsheet. In short, you can consider SQL as MS Excel on Steroids.

Top SQL Database Alternatives:

• MySQL
• OracleDB
• SQLite
• PostgreSQL
• AWS RDS
• MS SQL Server
• AWS Aurora
• MariaDB
• Google Cloud SQL
• SAP SQL Anywhere

NoSQL

A NoSQL database is a non-relational database used to store and retrieve data. These databases work best with big data and real-time web applications. In the NoSQL database, the data is in a tree-like structure. For instance, every new information is added as a branch and then sub-branches as you keep on adding.

Top NoSQL Database Alternatives:

• MongoDB
• Firebase
• Cassandra
• Elasticsearch
• Couchbase
• Oracle NoSQL
• Neo4j
• HBase
• Memcached
• CouchDB
• Redis

Why Did The Companies Move From SQL To NoSQL?

There were many drawbacks that businesses faced due to setting up an SQL database. Evidently, the NoSQL database resolved these drawbacks.

SQL

• The fixed schema of SQL made it hard (almost impossible) for changing business requirements.
• If you still try a schema change, it would be very problematic and time-consuming.
• SQL had insufficient performance when compared to new databases and high latency.
• Scalability became very limited and costly.

NoSQL

• It works well for both unstructured and unrelated data.
• NoSQL gives up a few features of the traditional databases to improve speed and scalability.
• These databases are quite cheaper, faster and safer to extend a preexisting program.

Choose The Best NoSQL Database: Firebase Vs MongoDB

Now that you may have found that NoSQL database is the best option for you to set up your servers, you must find the best NoSQL database. Likewise, there are two prominent candidates for you to choose from MongoDB Vs Firebase.

Firebase and MongoDB can both be used as a service. Consequently, they both have their own website where you can configure the backend server for your data. Most importantly, you can set the users, permissions, data security, and many other factors. These configurations are possible on both Firebase and MongoDB.

Let us get a more detailed look at what exactly are Firebase vs MongoDB, and what do they have to offer?

What is Firebase?

Firebase is a real-time engine with background connectivity. Moreover, it’s an entire ecosystem for building web and mobile apps. Google presently acquires Firebase. The Google Firebase is a much more complete solution than MongoDB as it has many services like hosting, storage, cloud function, machine learning, and much more.For my non-technical readers, Firebase is a Backend-as-a-Service. Furthermore, it provides a real-time database and backend as a service. The real-time database is perfect when you want your data to remain synchronized across all of your app users.

Cloud Firestore lets you store your data in the cloud so that your app data can be synced across all your users’ devices or share them among multiple users. Cloud Firestore offers robust client libraries, full support for offline mode, comprehensive set of security rules, easy-to-use data browsing tool, etc.

It works in absolute real-time, automatically fetching changes from your database as they happen.

Being a part of the Cloud Firebase services, it integrates seamlessly with all the other Firebase products.

It is perfect for applications that need real-time data fetching like chatting apps, multi-player gaming app, stock trading apps, or sports score update app.

Firebase Offers Following Suite Of Features

What is MongoDB?

Firstly, It’s an open Source NoSQL database that is managed and developed by MongoDB Inc. Above all, MongoDB is a document database that offers the scalability and flexibility that you want with the querying and indexing of your need. Further, the main emphasis while building MongoDB was on scalability and consistency.

Secondly, MongoDB doesn’t provide a complete ecosystem like Firebase but rather primarily focuses only on the storage of data. However, it is still adopted widely just because of the sheer number of different app categories it can power. The developers have a lot more power in developing apps because they don’t have to make their application accommodate the needs of the database anymore. Therefore, MongoDB accommodates them so the app can store data in a natural way.

Pros, Cons & Comparisons of Firebase Vs MongoDB

Here are some common comparisons between Firebase and MongoDB.

Firebase and MongoDB are very proficient and great in their respective applications so just a few common comparisons can’t do justice to these technologies

So here are a detailed list of Pros and Cons of MongoDB Vs. Google Firebase for you to get a better idea.

Pros of Firebase Vs MongoDB

Cons of MongoDB Vs Firebase

Firebase Vs MongoDB: Where to Use Each Database

Firebase Vs. MongoDB: Where Not to Use Each Database

Top Companies using Firebase for their Database needs:

Top Companies using MongoDB for their Database needs:

Firebase Vs. MongoDB: Who Has The Upper Hand In 2019?

Both the technologies have their own expertise and space of integration. For instance, Firebase is designed for real-time updates and data management. On the other hand, MongoDB is the best bet for quick data handling for large enterprises.

I believe that after all the descriptions, comparisons, Pros & Cons, the final decision should be left to you, the reader. Above all, it is you who is planning to choose from these two databases.

In conclusion; whichever database you choose, you will need a very highly skilled and intellectual team of developers to set up your back-end database structure. So choose your Firebase developer or MongoDB developer only after proper analysis and research.

#firebase #mongodb #mobile-apps #web-development