Google Firebase is a PaaS offering for developing web and mobile apps. Amit Jambusaria explains the advantages and walks through a sample app.

Firebase is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) offering from Google used for application development that supports various setups such as iOS, Android, Web, Unity, C++, or REST for everything else. Google Firebase can be used for a gamut of use-cases. Whether you are building a modest mobile app with relatively simple storage needs or an enterprise application with non-trivial scaling, security and high-availability requirements, Firebase handles it well. Firebase provides comprehensive cross-platform modules for building , releasing and monitoring applications.

Serverless Architecture – Firebase services can be accessed directly from any client application (mobile device or web app), eliminating the need for dedicated servers. The upside here comes in the form of significant savings of time and resources. This article explores some of the key Firebase modules that enable quick and efficient development of Serverless Applications. For the purpose of this article, I have created an example Firebase web application, which I will use to demonstrate the usage of the Firebase SDKs.

Realtime Database vs Cloud Firestore

Google Firebase has two NoSQL cloud-hosted database offerings that you can choose from – Realtime Database and Cloud Firestore. In both the offerings –

• Data is synchronized in real-time across all connected clients and across all geo-locations through real-time listeners
• Client first SDK (no need for dedicated servers)
• Offline support for mobile and web
• Free tier and then pay for what you use

Advantages of Cloud Firestore over Realtime database

Structured data - Cloud Firestore is a document-model DB, i.e. everything is stored as documents that contain key-value pairs. The values could be anything – strings, integers, floats, lists, binary bits, JSON maps, etc. These documents are, in turn, grouped into collections.

#firebase #serverless #sql prompt