I'm designing an app which needs to have some collaboration functionality. So 1 to many users can edit certain attributes of an event they plan together. e.g. the main-admin can change the title, picture etc. while all admin-users could change the date for example.
I would like to get some ideas how one would approach this in the modern world. Are there fancy frameworks etc.
Q: Is the best way storing it centraly on some server or would some peer to peer data storage work?
Q: My gut-feeling is that a web-application would probably be the easiest way, where people work on the object stored on the server instead of trying to sync a local copy with some central repository.
Is this correct?
Q: Are there mobile frameworks which could do the syncing, locking etc for me?
Thank you for some hints and suggestions. I know the questions are a bit broad, but I'm looking for directions not finished solutions. Thank you.
Kind regards
Fred
Some thoughts:
1a) There is no "best" way without a metric for better/best. But yes, having a server is almost certainly simpler, which is probably part of 'best' for most of us.
1b) Actually, there is always a server. Even p2p systems have clients and servers, it's just that every node is both a server and a client.
2) Yes, a web app would certain give you a lot of plumbing for free, & would probably be fastest/cheapest route to a working app. An alternative would be an olde worlde client/server database. A shinier approach might be mobile apps which use a webservice to communicate with a central server.
3) databases do that. But actually, if you use a web app it's probably not hard.
Analogies:
Apart from web apps, version control systems do exactly what you've
just described. they even do offline editting and subsequent merging.
Straightforward CRUD applications against a database also do what
you've just described.
But perhaps I'm under-estimating what you mean by collaboration?
Related
We've narrowed our selection for an ipaas down to the above 3.
Initially we're looking to pass data from a cloud based HR system to Netsuite, and from Netsuite to Salesforce, and sometimes JIRA.
i've come from a Mulesoft background which I think would be too complex for this. On the other hand it seems that Celigo is VERY drag and drop, and there's not much room for modification/customisation.
Of the three, do you have any experience/recommendations? We aren't looking for any code heavy custom APIs, most will just be simple scheduled data transfers but there may be some complexity within the field mapping, and we want to set ourselves up for the future.
I spent a few years removing Celigo from NetSuite and Salesforce. The best way I can describe Celigo is that it is like the old school anti-virus programs which were often worse than the viruses... lol... It digs itself into the end system, making removing it a nightmare.
Boomi does the job, but is very counter-intuitive, and overly complex. You can't do everything from one screen, you can't easily bounce back and forth between tasks/operations/etc. And, sometimes it is very difficult to find where endpoints are used, as they are not always shown in their "where is this used" feature. Boomi has a ton of endpoint connectors pre-built (the most, I believe), but I have not seen an easy way to just create your own. Boomi also has much more functionality than just the integrations, if that is something that may be needed.
Jitterbit, my favorite, is ridiculously simple to use. You can access everything from one main screen, you can connect to anything (as long as it can reach out to the network, or you can reach it via the network - internal or external). Jitterbit has a lot of pre-built endpoint connectors. It is also extremely easy to just create a connection to anything you want. The win with Jitterbit is that it is super easy to use, super easy to learn, it always works, they have amazing support (if you need it). I have worked with Jitterbit the most (about 6 years), and I have never been unable to complete an integration task in less that a couple of day, max.
I have extensive experience with Dell Boomi platform but none with JitterBit or Celigo. Dell Boomi offers very versatile and well supported iPaaS solution. The technical challenges of Boomi are some UI\usability issues (#W3BGUY mentioned the main ones) and the lack of out-of-the-box support for CI/CD and DevOps processes (code management, versioning, deployments etc.)
One more important component to consider here is the pricing of the platform. Boomi does charge their clients yearly connection prices. Connection is defined as a unique combination of URL, username and password. The yearly license costs vary and can range anywhere between ($1,000 - $12,000) per license per year. The price depends greatly on your integration landscape and the discounts provided so I would advise on engaging with vendor early to understand your costs. Would be great to hear from others on pricing for JitterBit and Celigo.
Boomi is also more than just an iPaaS platform. They offer other modules of their platform to customers: API Management, Boomi Flow (workflow and automation module), Master Data Hub (master data management). Some of these modules are well developed and some are in their infancy (API Management).
From my limited experience with MuleSoft platform, I share the OP's sentiments about it being too complex for simple integrations. They do provide great CI/CD and DevOps functionality though if that is something that is needed.
There is not a simple answer to a question like this. One needs to look at multiple aspects of the platform and make a decision based on multitude of factors. I would advise looking at Gartner and Forrester reports for a general guidelines and working out the pricing (initial and recurring) with the vendor.
I have only used Jitterbit, so can only comment on that. It works fine. It is pretty intuitive and easy to use, but does have some flexibility with writing your own queries, defining and mapping file formats, and choosing different transfer protocols.
I've only used the free version (which you need to host somewhere and also is not supported) and it was good enough for production tasks. If you have the luxury of time, I'd say download it and try it out. If it works for you, throw it on a server or upgrade to the cloud version.
One note: Jitterbit uses background services. If you run it locally and then decide to migrate your account to a server, you need to stop those services on your local. Otherwise, it will try to run jobs from both locations and that doesn't turn out well.
Consider checking out Choreo as well. It has a novel simultaneous code + low-code approach for integration development. And provides rich AI support for performance monitoring, debugging, and data mapping.
Disclaimer: I'm a member of the project.
I'm in the process of designing an application that would tie into the database for multiple e-commerce stores.
I have the general business logic down but the problem is, I have no idea on the most painfree and effective way to do the data integration. I know how to access my own databases, but this is something I always just left to my hosting provider to handle the backend and I just developed the interface
Can someone point me in the right direction on this? There is a large emphasis on ease of installation. So my customers (once I get them) should be able to very easily integrate their system into my app.
RESTful web services are what many folks do for this.
Start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer
Then revise this to be a more specific question.
You might need to look at direct VPN/SSL connection from their server to yours.
Please I need help.
I have project in which I need application which communicates with local DB server and simultaneously with central remote DB server to complete some task(read stock quotas from local server create order and then write order to central orders DB,...).
So, I don`t know which architecture and technology do this.
Web application, .NET WinForms client applications on each computer, or web services based central application with client applications?
What are general differences between this approaches?
Thanks
If you don't want to expose your database directly to the clients, I'd recommend having a web service layer in between. Depending on the sensitivity of your data and the security level of your network, I'd recommend either a web service approach (where you can manage the encryption of data yourself, and without need for expensive ssl certificates) or a web interface (which might be easier to construct, but with limitations in security).
I agree with Tomas that a web service layer might be good. However, when it comes to choosing between webforms or winforms I don't think your question includes enough information to make the choice.
I'd say that if you want a powerful and feature rich user interface and want to make development easy, Winforms is probably the way to go. But if you need it to be usuable from a varied array of clients and want easier maintenance and deployment, a web app might be best.
First, focus on the exact relationship between these databases. What does "local" mean. Right there on the user's desktop? Shared between all the users in their office? Presumably the local quotes (you do mean stock quotes and not quotas?) could potentiually be a little out of date relative to the central order server's view of the world. Does that matter? I place an order for 100 X at price 78.34, real price may be different. What is the intended behaviour.
My guess is that there is at least some business logic and so we need to decide where that runs. One (thick client) approach is to put that logic on the desktop, the desktop app then might write directly to the central DB. I don't tend to do this for several reasons:
Every client desktop gets a database connection. Scaling is not good, eventually the database gets unhappy when the number of users gets very large.
If we need a slightly different app, perhaps exposed to a different set of users via the Web or whatever, we end up reproducing that business logic.
An alternative approach (thin or browser based) keeps the UI on the desktop, but puts the logic on the server. The client can then invoke some kind of service. Now there's lots of possible ways of doing that, a simple Web Service or Rest Service will do the job. I hope it's clear that this service-based appraoch addressed my two points above.
By symmetry I would treat the local databases in the same way, wrap them in services. However it's possible that some more complex relationship between the databases exists and in which case you might need the local service layer to interact with the central service layer.
I'm touting the general pronciple of Do Not Repeat Yourself, implement each piece of business logic once.
Is there a way to make an AIR app connect to a database over a network. I know it has a built in SQLLite but I need to connect to a database over a network. Is there anyway to do this? If not directly then maybe through the help of something else like Java.
Thanks!
The main challenge should not be the "over a network" requirement, but rather that you need an ActionScript driver for your DBMS. There are some third party libraries, e.g. asSql or Asql (both for MySQL), but I have no experience with either of them.
However, depending on your application, you might really want to consider to introduce some back-end encapsulating business logic and persistence, rather than having the AIR app talk to the remote DBMS directly. Especially for multi-user apps I would definitely discourage you from doing so.. If you want to introduce a back-end, the Java platform is certainly a good choice since there are two very good AMF3 implementations (BlazeDS and GraniteDS). I would also recommend to take a look at the Grails framework and especially the Grails Flex Plugin. There is a nice and informative article on InfoQ about Grails and Flex.
I am going to write a database application for the camp I work for. I am thinking about writing it in C# with a Windows GUI interface but using a browser as the application is seeming more and more appelaing for various reasons. What I am wondering is why someone would not choose to write an application as a web application. Ex. The back button can cause you some trouble. Are there other things that ayone can think of?
There are plenty of cons:
Speed and responsiveness tend to be significantly worse
Complicated UI widgets (such as tree controls) are harder to do
Rendering graphics of any kind is pretty tricky, 3D graphics is even harder
You have to mess around with logins
A centralised server means clients always need network access
Security restrictions may cause you trouble
Browser incompatibilities can cause a lot of extra work
UI conventions are less well-defined on the web - users may find it harder to use
Client-side storage is limited
The question is.. do enough of those apply to your project to make web the wrong choice?
One thing that was not mentioned here is the level of complexity and knowledge required to generate a good web application. The problem being unless you are doing something very simple, there is no "Single" knowledge or technology that goes into these applications.
For example if you were to write an application for some client server platform.. you may develop in Java or C++. For a complex web application you may have to have expertise in Java, Java Script, HTML, Flash, CSS, Ajax, SQL, J2EE.. etc. Also the components of a web based application are also more numerous, Web Application Server, HTTP Server, Database, Browser.. are tipical components but there could be more.. a client server app is tipical just what it says.. a client application and a Server application. My experience and personal preference is not web based .. web based is great for many things. But even though I am an IT Architect for a leading company that is completely emersed in Web Apps as the solution for everything... The cons are many still.. I do thing the technology will evolve and the cons will go away over time though.
Essentially the real limitations are only through of the platform, being the browser. If you have to account for all browsers in current use that can be a pain due to varying degrees of standards in each of them.
If have control of the which browser to use, that is everyone is on computers that you control on site, and say you install firefox on all of them, you could then leverage the latest Javascript and CSS standards to their fullest in your content delivery.
[edit] You could also look into options like the adobe integrated runtime or "AIR" as an option allowing you to code the front-end with traditional browser based options like xhtml/css/javascript, flash/flex and have the backend hooked up to your database online, only also providing functionality of a traditional desktop app at the same time.
The biggest difference and drawback I see with web applications is state management. Since the web is, by nature, stateless every thing you want to maintain has to be sent back and forth from the server with every request and response. How to efficiently store and retrieve it in a matter with respect to page size and performance is hard to do at times. Also the fact that there is no real standard (at least not that everyone adheres to) for browsers makes consistency really..........fun.
You need to have a network access to the server that you are going to have the web application on (if there are going to be multiple users for the application - which is typically the case).
Actually, there are more pros than cons - if you can give some details about your application, we could help a little more...
It completely depends on the requirements of your project. For the most part, there isn't much web applications cannot do these days. Admittedly, certain applications do belong on the desktop as browsers (while currently advancing, and rapidly), still are not quite there yet. From the advent of applications such as Google Docs, Gmail
There isn't much you -cannot- do on the web. If you're creating a World of Warcraft competitor however, the web is most certainly not the optimal solution. Again, unfortunately we'd need more insight on the application you're building for the camp. The best part about the web is that anyone with a browser can use your application.
Web applications delegate processing to a remote machine. Depending on the amount of processing, this can be a con. Consider a photo editor that's a web app.
Web applications also can't deal with a whole lot of data going back and forth to and from a client. You can watch video online.. when it's compressed. It will be awhile before we see any web-based video editing software.
Browser compatibility is also a hassle. You can't control the look-and-feel of the application 100%.
Vaibhav has a good point. What's your application?
A major one is down time for migrations... users will not expect the application to be down, ever, but realistically it will have to be down for major upgrades. When doing this with a desktop application, the user (or end-user systems admin) is in control of when upgrades happen; with an online app, they're not.
For applications which have large data, performance can be a major problem as you're storing a large number of users' data centrally, which means the IO performance will not be as good as it would be if you gave them all a laptop.
In general scalability gives problems for a server-based app. Desktop applications scale really well.
You can do an awful lot with a web-based app, but it is a lot easier to do certain things with a thick client:
Performance: You get simple access to the full power of the client's CPU.
Responsiveness: Interactivity is fast and easy.
Graphics: You can easily use graphics libraries such as DirectX and OpenGL to create fast impressive graphics.
Work with local files
Peer-to-peer
Deciding whether a web application is a good approach depends on what you are trying to achieve. However here are some more general cons of web applications:
Real integration with desktop apps (e.g. Outlook) is impossible
Drag and drop between your app and the desktop / other running apps
With a web application, there are more privacy concerns, when you are storing user data on your servers. You have to make sure that you don't loose/disclose it and your users have to be comfortable with the idea of storing that data on your servers.
Apart from that, there are many security problems, like Man-in-the-middle attacks, XSS or SQL injections.
You also need to make sure that you have enough computing power and bandwidth at hand.
"Ex. The back button can cause you some trouble."
You'll have to be specific on this. A lot of people make fundamental mistakes in their web applications and introduce bugs in how they handle transactions. If you do not use "Redirect after Post" (also known as Post-Redirect-Get, PRG design), then you've created a bug which appears as a problem with the back button.
A blanket statement that the back button in trouble is unlikely to be true. A specific example would clarify your specific question on this.
The back button really is not that much of an issue if you design your application correctly. You can use AJAX to manipulate parts of the current page, without adding items into the browser history (since the page itself wont change).
The biggest issue with designing web applications has to do with state, and the challenges that need to be programmed around. With a desktop application, state is easy to handle, you can leave a database connection opened, lock the record and wait for the user to make the changes and commit. With a web application, you could lock the record...but then what if the user closes the browser? These things must be overcome in the design of your application.
When designing a web application, make sure that each trip to the server "stands alone" and provides a complete answer. Always re-initialize your variables before performing any work and never assume anything. One of the challenges I ran into once was pulling "pages" of grid data back to the user. In a real busy system, with record additions/modifications happening in real time, the user navigation from page to page would vary greatly, sometimes even resulting in viewing the same set of a few records as new additions were added in-front of the query.