choosing a backend for your mobile app? don’t roll the dice!

studiomagnolia.comCesare Rocchi

Choosing a back end for your mobile app:don’t roll the dice!

_funkyboy

Saturday, November 30, 13

SWIPE CONFERENCE 2012

• Needs when choosing a backend

• Features

• Overview of different approaches

Outline



Who am I?



UX designer and developer



upbeat.it



@_funkyboy



@funkyboy



Who are you?



• Not apps where mobile is “just a view”

• Apps which are inherently mobile

• From web to app

• App needs a back-end

App Target



Questions



Have I to manage it?



• At which level?

• Am I able to do it?

• Have I time to learn?

• Is it worth it?




What’s the synch model?



• Does it match my goals?

• Can I change it if needed?

•What about protocols?




Have I to pay?



Who is to pay?



Impact on UX?



• Does it break any flow?

• How frequently?

• is it “ok” with that?

Impact on UX?



Lock-in?



• How to migrate data?

• Switching cost?

• Code front-end

• Data compatibility

Lock-in?



• iCloud

• Dropbox

• Custom

• Back-end as a Service (BaaS)

Options



What is iCloud?



Synchs stuff



It just works ...



... when it works.



• Have I to manage it?

•What’s the synch model?

•Who’s to pay?

• Impact on UX?

• Lock-in?

Questions



• Learn the API

• Apple takes care of

• installation

• scalability




•Monitors changes

•Works on metadata

• Shreds files

• Supports conflict resolution

Daemon



Special folder, synched



Synched when “appropriate”



• Key-value

• Documents

• Core Data

Types of Information



• The final user

• Your app will use his quota

• 5Gb for free

Who’s to pay?



Impact on UX?



• User expectation

• No control on upload

• “Why isn’t there?”

• Open the app to synch

• User turns off iCloud?

Impact on UX?



Lock-in• Huge

• Only on iOS

• No way to migrate



Dropbox



• File-based

• Special folder

• Synchronized across devices

• Supports other platforms

Dropbox



• Already set up

• installation

• bandwidth

• scalability




• Desktop synchronizes continuously

•Mobile apps have to query the backend

• HTTP API

• SDKs for iOS, Android, Ruby, Python




• No conflict resolution (revision #)

• Data serialization is up to you

• No file shredding




• The final user

• Your app will use his disk quota

• 2 Gb for free

Who’s to pay?



• Authentication the first time

• User might modify files

• Control on the upload

Impact on UX?



Lock-in• None

• Each user owns his data

• Personal/team usage

• ... but nothing more



• box.net

• sugarsync.com

• google drive

• amazon S3

Similar



Custom



IaaS PaaS SaaS



• Data

• Application

IaaS PaaS SaaS• Data

• Application

• Runtime

•Middleware

• OS



• Data

• Application

IaaS PaaS SaaS• Data

• Application

• Runtime

•Middleware

• OS

AWS, Rackspace, ... Heroku, Appfog, ... BaasBox



• Data

• Application

• Data

• Application

• Runtime

•Middleware

• OS

IaaS PaaS

AWS, Rackspace, ... Heroku, Appfog, ...



• Data

• Application

PaaS



•Which language?

•Which DB?

PaaS Questions



Heroku



• Ruby

• Python

• Java

• Scala

• Closure

• Node.js

Languages



• Postgres

•MySQL (via addon)

•MongoDB (via addon)

DBs



• Essentially a process

•Web

•Worker

• # of dynos + db profile + addons = backend cost

Dyno



• Data

• Application

IaaS PaaS• OS

•Middleware

• Runtime

• Data

• Application



• OS

•Middleware

• Runtime

• Data

• Application

IaaS



•Which OS?

•Which language?

•Which DB?

• How many machines?

Questions



Amazon Web Services



• CDN

• Storage

• Networking

• DBs

• Services: email, queue managers

• Con: cost estimation

Amazon Web Services



• Buy a server

• pick the hardware

• install OS

• rent space/bandwidth in a farm

Good old way



Server side frameworks



BaaS



• Backend for mobile apps

• Files, DB, key-value

• API SDK

• Push notifications

• Analytics

BaaS



• User management

• account creation/verification

• Login with Twitter/Facebook

• ACL

Baas



• Time to market

• Focus on the front end

Baas



• cloudmine.me

• stackmob.com

• kinvey.com

• parse.com

• sencha.io

Services



Blood pact



BaasBox



• No application server

• No database server

• JVM only requirement

• Runs everywhere

BaasBox



• User management

• ACL

• Assets

• Collections

• Push notifications

BaasBox



• Download

•./start

BaasBox



BaasBox on CentOS

yum install java-1.7.0-openjdk

scp baasbox-xx.tar.gz user@host:remotepath

cd remotepath

./start



PizzaBox

BaasBox

Pizzaiolo Clients

Dev



Asset

curl --form [email protected] --form name=margherita --user admin:admin -H X-BAASBOX-APPCODE:1234567890 http://localhost:9000/admin/asset


http://localhost:9000/admin/asset



Menu

curl -d "name=menu&meta=[ { "name": "Margherita", "id" : "margherita", "price": 5, "ingredients": "Pizza con pomodoro e mozzarella" }, ... ]" --user admin:admin -H X-BAASBOX-APPCODE:1234567890 http://localhost:9000/admin/asset





Create ordercurl -d "{ "list": {"margherita": 2,"quattrostagioni": 2}, "user": { "name": "Cesare", "surname": "Rocchi", "address": "Via delle vie 12, Roma", ... }, "time": "2013-01-02Z14:21", "total": 12.5, }"

-H X-BAASBOX-APPCODE:1234567890 --user cesare:cesare http://localhost:9000/document/orders


http://localhost:9000/document/orders

http://localhost:9000/document/orders


Now we are working on• Service

• Business analytics



Contacts• http://www.baasbox.com

• twitter.com/baasbox

• facebook.com/baasbox

• github.com/baasbox

• [email protected]


http://www.baasbox.com

http://www.baasbox.com

mailto:[email protected]



[email protected]




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