How to Choose Right Database for Mobile App
The database is the heart of most mobile apps and choosing the right one is critical for your success. Moreover, it collects and stores user information during the one-time registration process.
Cloud services and Database providers offer synchronization and offline capabilities to limit the need to depend on the database.
For Example – Nowadays we have industry-leading solutions such as:
There are different types of database to choose from:
There are 8 key factors which are taken into consideration while evaluating your database solutions:
The data structure tells us how data is stored and retrieved. The process of selecting a database must include appropriate data structure to store and retrieve data. If you fail to do this, then your mobile application is slow to retrieve the data.
Other data related elements play an important role in a data structure:
The flexibility of data modelling means how appropriately and effectively you can articulate your data model requirements for your app. As mobile apps evolve rapidly so model flexibility is an important factor that needs to consider. A relational database can be a good choice if you require strong data consistency but it is critical whether to evolve your model as requirements change over time.
If you are planning to support IOS, Android or both lots of mobile applications evolve to add a web companion app or a native desktop. If you want to plan to follow the same path then it will evaluate cloud options and database during the life cycle of the application.
A high level of security must be maintained properly. If the storage is synchronized then it is important to enabling secure access and transmission.
For this you need to look at the following:
Authentication should be flexible to allow the Authentication providers:
Data at rest
For the data at rest, you need to support both file system encryption and data level encryption.
Data at motion
All communication should be conducted through secured channels like TLS or SSL for the data which is in motion.
Read/write access
For data read or write access, the database needs to provide control over what information can be accessed by users.
A mobile platform that uses decentralized data can experience as the same data is modified by multiple devices. So, for this reason, you need a robust mechanism system to resolve conflicts. Here the flexibility of conflict resolution mechanism is more important. The one you choose should enable the conflict resolution on the device by the human, by an external system in the cloud.
The ability to control how the system sync is very important for many mobile applications.
It includes replication strategy, conditional replication and replication filtering. In conditional replication, you need to replicate the data under certain conditions. In replication filtering, it needs the ability to replicate some of the data and not other data. And replication strategy allows for push polling, one time and streaming.
You need configurable sync topology like star topology to meet partition requirements. This will enable some parts to function offline. There are some other types of topologies such as tree and mesh which allow different systems to operate offline. The most common topology is star topology which connects the devices through a central hub.
You will need to make a sync solution whether you to want to make your own sync solution or to buy it from an established provider. Building and buying are difficult and expensive for most of the apps when evaluating your mobile sync and storage providers you should follow everything which is listed above as it will be critical for developing flexible, secure and dependable mobile application.