Is Parse an adequate solution here? - heroku

I'm contemplating to use Parse as a platform for my app, as I'm trying to avoid creating and managing the cloud infrastructure myself.
For the sake of simplicity let's say that my app will hook into an Exchange Server and will need to leverage some hosted Machine Learning service to categorize my e-mail and report on insights found.
I'm assuming that Parse would store my core data, while the hosted ML will store the "Big Data" associated with processing for insights.
I'm also expecting my app to receive push notifications generated by the hosted ML service.
Does this sound like a plausible way to go about it and leverage Parse, or am I better off developing the backend myself?

I think parse.com is the right place for you requirements, because they have everything you need like storage of core data, push notifications, cloud module which can be integrated with heroku, social integration, user management functionalities.
They also have large set of client libraries for desktop and mobile apps (node,java,.net etc...) also they have libraries of embedded devices.
The biggest advantage is that everything is setup, and you are focused on software development not on infrastructure things. This is my opinion.

I've been experimenting with the above stack and so far was really impressed. Seems like a viable path forward. The Cloud Code capability of Parse is very solid, and easy to work with. If you want to run services outside of Parse code this us also possible : just issue REST calls.

Related

looking for Parse alternative server

I'm a hobby developer that use Parse.com as my database and website host, as Facebook is going to shutdown Parse.com, I'm now looking for alternative Parse server.
I use Parse's Cloud Code Hosting to build Dynamic Web App, and Parse itself to store data collected from the website I've build, with custom Cloud Code to help getting and managing data. I've build a Windows Phone app for myself to manage the data I've collected too.
Is there any alternative server that has my requirement?
Dynamic Website
Database host
Custom Cloud Code (with BeforeSave and AfterSave trigger)
with Windows Phone SDK (or REST API if doesn't have)
Very thank you for helping me!
Try out Hasura.
Hasura (http://www.hasura.io): Hasura is a neat PaaS + BaaS solution. It is now competing with Firebase, Kinvey, Heroku et al. There is a full comparison page here: Compare | Hasura (https://compare.beta.hasura.io) . The difference majorly lies in infra ownership as well as no tech lock-in due to open-source components(like docker, kubernetes,postgres) building the major chunk of the platform. Check it out. There is also an option to explore (https://explore.beta.hasura.io/) Hasura by building your own blog web app and a todo app in under 15 mins.
Hasura should fit in perfectly for your needs.
DISCLAIMER : Hasura Engineer here.
I'm using Simbla website application development. It doesn't support all of your requirments but it has great UI builder with a backend parse database.
You can try using the parse open source server it has cloud code and you can use a custom database with it.

CodenameOne plan for the cloud storage API

Since CodenameOne doesn't support "the cloud storage API" any more and the parse.com is going to retire soon as well. Does CodenameOne has any plan to release a new Cloud Storage API or provide suggestions/guidelines to help developers to deal with the parse4cn1 library code, cloud code, database structure and data in parse.com?
That is something you will have to figure out yourself as parse4cn1 was initially contributed by a community member and wasn't developed by Codenameone team.
You can use a simple webservices created in php, python or java, hosted along your content with any ISP.
You may also have a look at amazon aws which is promising, they provide a cloud solution but their SDKs is not yet integrated to Codenameone.
I made the parse4cn1 lib and I'm also wondering what's smartest to do. With the announcement of Parse.com's imminent shutdown, there's been a lot of discussion around alternatives. My feeling is that "the dust is yet to settle" as per what options are best and reliable for the longer term (it would be a pity to migrate to another service only for it to be shut down soon). So I personally plan to wait till sometime in Q2 to do a proper evaluation of the alternatives. Hopefully, there'll be more clarity then.
The option to host one's own Parse server (e.g. on AWS or Heroku) is getting interesting. They recently announced support for push notifications on iOS and Android. If (when?) they open source the Parse.com dashboard code, I think that option would be much more interesting.
At some point in the coming months, I plan to make a parse4cn1 release that exposes an option to set the server path. With that, anyone migrating to the Parse server option should, in principle, be able to continue to use the cn1lib. Of course, for features that are supported by the open source Parse server.
PS: Here are pointers to some of such discussions on Parse alternatives:
https://github.com/relatedcode/ParseAlternatives
http://www.slant.co/topics/5219/compare/~firebase_vs_kumulos_vs_kinvey

How to move Parse.com database to my own server and still use Parse.com SDK?

I'm using Parse.com SDK services for my Android app.
I've seen that Parse had released their Android SDK as an open source project on Github on this address.
My app is almost finished, and when I'm uploading it to the Play Store, I don't want to be controlled by Parse.com (I mean that I don't want to be blocked someday, or I don't know that), so I want to move my whole database to my own server that hosted on a secure company.
I've checked the open source project on Github and realized that all I need to use it on my own server is to generate an Application ID and a client key.
So I want to ask if someone knows how to generate an Application ID and a client key of Parse to use it on my own server, or that you maybe knows another way of moving it to my server? And one more question: Today I'm using also Facebook SDK with my app. If I will move my database to my own server, will I still be able to use Facebook SDK on my app?
Thanks!
I have write an article about how to migrate parse to a custom server.
https://medium.com/#jcminarro/run-parse-server-on-your-own-server-using-digitalocean-b2a7d66e1205
There's a massive difference between Parse open-sourcing their SDKs compared to revealing their entire backend architecture and its configuration.
The open-sourced SDKs are essentially wrappers for Parse's REST API along with some convenience functions and logic for natively interpreting the JSON data Parse is transmitting.
At a high level, Parse uses MongoDB for its core database and is entirely hosted using AWS (Amazon Web Services). The entire architecture is highly complex and is not something you could just drag and drop onto your own software stack or hardware backend.
To help give you a better idea of how Parse achieves all of their services, here's an interesting presentation their Dev Ops team gave at an AWS convention. Suffice it to say, hosting the backend services for over 180,000 apps requires a complex infrastructure and that is the "secret sauce" so to speak for Parse and is why Facebook purchased them for over $85 million two years ago.

Data synchronization in a Chrome packaged app

In my pursuit to write a Chrome packaged app, I am struggling to get my data synchronized to the app so that it can be used in offline mode.
My data lives on a server and I access it trough a restful service in this case I use.net MVC WebApi
What I have tried: Using Breezejs because of the easy offline capabilities ; the problem is that
window.localStorage
is not available in packaged apps, I did tried switching it out for IndexedDB but no luck.
I tried chrome.storage that worked great with the build in sync but it is not a big truck and that is what I need at least a 10tunner.
So my Question; is there a silver bullet that has some XMLHttpRequest implementations, that makes it easier to get data from a restful service, storing it to IndexedDB so that it can be used offline and when going online syncs the changes, that is compatible with packaged apps.
I know I must probably write my own but if someone already went trough all the hoops and complexities of synchronization that can guide me it will be awesome.
Have you looked at using the syncFileSystem API ?
As long as you are happy to sync your data into Google Drive, this api should meet your needs for not implementing sync code yourself and still working offline.

What exactly is Heroku?

I just started learning Ruby on rails and I was wondering what Heroku really is? I know that its a cloud that helps us to avoid using servers? When do we actually use it?
Heroku is a cloud platform as a service. That means you do not have to worry about infrastructure; you just focus on your application.
In addition to what Jonny said, there are a few features of Heroku:
Instant Deployment with Git push - build of your application is performed by Heroku using your build scripts
Plenty of Add-on resources (applications, databases etc.)
Processes scaling - independent scaling for each component of your app without affecting functionality and performance
Isolation - each process (aka dyno) is completely isolated from each other
Full Logging and Visibility - easy access to all logging output from every component of your app and each process (dyno)
Heroku provides very well written tutorial which allows you to start in minutes. Also they provide first 750 computation hours free of charge which means you can have one processes (aka Dyno) at no cost. Also performance is very good e.g. simple web application written in node.js can handle around 60 - 70 requests per second.
Heroku competitors are:
OpenShift by Red Hat
Windows Azure
Amazon Web Services
Google App Engine
VMware
HP Cloud Services
Force.com
It's a cloud-based, scalable server solution that allows you to easily manage the deployment of your Rails (or other) applications provided you subscribe to a number of conventions (e.g. Postgres as the database, no writing to the filesystem).
Thus you can easily scale as your application grows by bettering your database and increasing the number of dynos (Rails instances) and workers.
It doesn't help you avoid using servers, you will need some understanding of server management to effectively debug problems with your platform/app combination. However, while it is comparatively expensive (i.e. per instance when compared to renting a slice on Slicehost or something), there is a free account and it's a rough trade off between whether it's more cost effective to pay someone to build your own solution or take the extra expense.
Heroku Basically provides with webspace to upload your app
If you are uploading a Rails app then you can follow this tutorial
https://github.com/mrkushjain/herokuapp
As I see it, it is a scalable administrated web hosting service, ready to grow in any sense so you don't have to worry about it.
It's not useful for a normal PHP web application, because there are plenty of web hosting services with ftp over there for a simple web without scalability needs, but if you need something bigger Heroku or something similar is what you need.
It is exposed as a service via a command line tool so you can write scripts to automate your deployments. Anyway it is pretty similar to other web hosting services with Git enabled, but Heroku makes it simpler.
That's its thing, to make the administration stuff simpler to you, so it saves you time. But I'm not sure, as I'm just starting with it!
A nice introduction of how it works in the official documentation is:
https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/how-heroku-works
Per DZone: https://dzone.com/articles/heroku-or-amazon-web-services-which-is-best-for-your-startup
Heroku is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) product based on AWS, and is vastly different from Elastic Compute Cloud. It’s very important to differentiate ‘Infrastructure as a Service’ and ‘Platform as a Service’ solutions as we consider deploying and supporting our application using these two solutions.
Heroku is way simpler to use than AWS Elastic Compute Cloud. Perhaps it’s even too simple. But there’s a good reason for this simplicity. The Heroku platform equips us with a ready runtime environment and application servers. Plus, we benefit from seamless integration with various development instruments, a pre-installed operating system, and redundant servers.
Therefore, with Heroku, we don’t need to think about infrastructure management, unlike with AWS EC2. We only need to choose a subscription plan and change our plan when necessary.
That article does a good job explaining the differences between Heroku and AWS but it looks like you can choose other iaas (infrastructure) providers other than AWS. So ultimately Heroku seems to just simplify the process of using a cloud provider but at a cost.

Resources