From what I know, Parse offers convenient communication stacks for various platforms such as iOS, so it is easy to build clients that use your web app.
But Parse also seems to be tightly integrated with Facebook. If you were to build a web app that does not need Facebook, but that may integrate with Facebook in the long term, is Parse the clear winner over deploying directly to AWS, or are there important disadvantages to consider?
As far as I understand their page Parse is a PaaS (platform as a service) provider like Heroku and others while AWS is a IaaS (infrastructure as a service) provider.
Pros for PaaS:
They care about the infrastructure
You build your app on an existing platform
For the start you don't need "ops-guys" as you don't do ops
You can take their knowledge and prebuilt tools for your advance
Pros for IaaS:
You have full control about the underlaying infrastructure
You can start with a greenfield and build what ever you want
You can use tools like Puppet / Chef / ... to control your servers
You don't have to pay for the additional stuff you get when using PaaS
(but have to pay your people for it)
So there is not a winner of this "battle" but you have to decide whether you want to use prebuilt tooling and give some independence for this or whether you want to have the absolute control over everything (nearly as you can't touch the hardware) and invest time and manpower into building your own tooling.
"Better, Faster, Cheaper.."
If you are pursuing mobile first strategy, Parse is a great tool for bootstrapping a mature, full web-presence from nothing more than an original beta app.
I dont have direct experience with AWS.
I have used Heroku/Parse integrating (very quickly) a stand alone mobile app with the back-end where the back end needs to cover following:
DB/persistence/noSql
Workflow - async tasks
REST API interface HTTP
Once the mobile app existed with only stubbed local data , Parse allowed a single engineer to build out ALL infrastructure mentioned above very quickly, taking the app from single user to multi-user with full DB and workflow that backs client side events with considerable server-side and cloud side business logic and process. Scaling related startup stuff that used to take weeks took only days.
The compression (time&money) when scaling up an app stack is really something. The Parse API did almost everything that i needed with one small exception (remuxing UGC media).
Personally, i abandoned the parse/android SDK in favor of a more robust REST API (threading on client-side and heavy HTTP activity ).
Developers used to Curl/REST dev stacks will take to Parse.
Related
Can we deploy QlikSense/QlikView on serverless architecture?
Currently using Monolithic architecture, any other way to move on to serverless?
While I am not familiar with Qlik's products, it is unlikely they would be suitable for serverless architecture.
Companies generally offer the products either as:
Downloadable products that you run on your own server (which could be a virtual server in the cloud), or
Software-as-a-Service, where you access their website directly and no server is required (eg Salesforce)
"Serverless architecture" is a design decision that can be made when designing a software product. It means the the application is broken-down into small components ('microservices') that can be run on services like AWS Lambda, with no actual server.
However, such architecture would normally only be used for your own applications that you create. If another company has designed their system to be 'serverless', then they would normally run it on a cloud system (eg AWS) and offer it to users as Software-as-a-Service. It would be highly unusual to have a 'download' product that runs on a serverless architecture.
I notice that Qlik has product offerings that run on AWS (AWS Marketplace: Qlik), which runs on an Amazon EC2 instance, rather than serverless.
If you look into the Qlik Core product then yes Qlik can be deployed on an elastic containerised enviroment. But then as I understand it you don't get the standard objects and visualisations, user management etc. So you have to code your own stuff that ties into the Qlik Data Analytics Engine via apis.
From https://core.qlik.com/why-qlik-core/
So, how do you get it? Licensing info here but let’s talk components
Linux-based Associative Engine – provided as a Docker image with built-in support for Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform
Supporting APIs – these ingest your data into the Qlik Associative Engine through connectors
Supporting Open Source Libraries – these various libraries by Qlik expose the engine to help you build solutions faster
It’s all language agnostic but JavaScript lovers will find it easier to work with given the number of our open source tools available in JavaScript. Other top languages and tools used include R, Go, Shell, C#, Python, Java and D3. Qlik Core can also be managed with the orchestration tool of your choice for implementing, scaling and managing containerized applications.
It really depends on what exactly are you building. As The Budac mentioned you can use Qlik Core
If you just want invoke Qlik API (for example some automation jobs) then serverless functions are making sense.
Qlik Sense (both Enterprise and Kubernetes versions) expose a lot more different API which can be called from technically everywhere.
QlikView on the other hand is more ... conservative. QV is an older software and the API/integrations are more limited. For example: to call the Management API you have to be on the same domain as QV. Personally I've only connected to QV Management API only with C# and pretty sure you cant use JS/Node
I would be starting ft in one company, where i was been told that the application is developed using 'Sas' and 'salesforce'. What is the difference between two?
And which are recommended online resource which I can use to learn more about it.
SAS is software for statistical analysis. If your company/job description doesn't look like working with large sets of data & complex reporting that's probably not it.
They probably mean SaaS (Software as a Service) model, also known as "the cloud", cloud computing etc. You write the program (or use / modify existing one) but you don't buy servers, worry about network connection, electricity costs, load balancing (spikes in traffic will not cause your website to go down). Many apps operate in this model. Microsoft's Azure cloud (or even online wersions of MS Office). There's Siebel Oracle on Demand CRM, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP I think also has SaaS offering...
It's a big topic, I'm simplifying a lot here. And then there are Platform as a Service things too (PaaS) where they give you "just" the hosting etc but no base application to build on top of. You write everything you need from scratch and upload it. Think Heroku or Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Salesforce is "just" one more SaaS application. You start with base application & database, similar to all other clients in the world. You can install plugins to it (some free, some paid), configure it yourself, write custom code if your functionality is too complex... You can do a lot with just clicks & drag & drop but if you need to code stuff then JavaScript (for client-side) and Apex (for server-side) will be your friend. Apex is bit similar to Java.
Where to start... Trailhead is good source of self-paced trainings. You can sign up for a free Salesforce Developer Edition (has almost all features as the paid one but limited storage space), try to pass some courses... Or in SF help&training there should be tons of videos (actually in that link whole left menu "getting started with salesforce" might be good).
I have created a django app that contains c++ for some of the views as well as a java library. How would I deploy this app? What kind of hosting service allows for multiple languages? I have looked at EC2, GAE, and several platforms (like heroku) but I can't seem to find a definitive solution.
I have never deployed anything to the web so a simple explanation would be much appreciated.
PaaS stuff is probably not your best bet. If you want the scalability and associated buzzwords(muh 99.9999999999% availability because my servers are hosted in a parallel dimension without electrical storms, power outages, hurricanes, earthquakes, or nuclear holocausts) that comes with hosting your application on a huge web company's platform, check out IaaS(Infrastructure as a service) systems like Google's Compute Engine or AWS. With these you just get a virtual server (or servers), running your Linux distro of choice, and you can install and run whatever you please on them without being constrained to a specific platform like App Engine or Heroku(where you have to basically write your app to specifically run on that platform). If you plan on consuming a ton of bandwidth/resources from the get-go, you will almost certainly get a better deal using a dedicated server(s) from a small company.
Interested in what specifically you are executing C++ for in a Django view. Image/video processing?
Well. Deployment is not really something where a simple explanation helps much.
First I would check what the requirements to the operating system are (compilers, dependencies,…). That will maybe reduce the options quickly.
I guess that with a setup containing C++ & Java artifacts, the usual PaaS (GaE, Heroku,…) offerings will not be sufficient because they define the stack. And a mixture of Python/C++/Java is rather uncommon I'd say.
Choosing an IaaS offering (EC2, …) may be an option. There you can run your whole self-defined stack and have the possibility of easier scaling.
Hosting the application on your own server(s) is also always possible. Check your data protection regulations to find out if it's not even a requirement.
There are a lot of ways to get the Django application to run. The Django documentation has some information about deployment. If you have certain special requirements, uwsgi may be a good application server.
You may also want a web server in front of the application. Possibilities range from using uwsgi's built-in http server or using e.g. Nginx with uwsgi.
All in all every component of the whole "deployment" has hundereds of bells and whistels and it's not easy to give advice without knowing specific requirements and properties of the system itself. You'll also probably need a database you have to deploy.
But before deploying it to the web, it's also important to have a solid build process to assemble all the parts. And not only on the development machine. With three languages involved this should be the first step solve. If it easily and automagically deploys in a development environment, moving it to a server is easier.
Kinvey is Backend as a Service | Mobile Cloud Backend as a Service
Is Kinvey ( http://www.kinvey.com/ ) good, or using custom Java server with database a good idea ?
I am a member of the Kinvey engineering team, and can talk a bit about BaaS in general. While creating your own backend gives you a lot of flexibility and control, it is also a lot of work.
Back-end as a service providers like Kinvey offer a platform to speed up app development and have already done a lot of the work for you. Tasks like managing a database server and a web service front-end, managing the storage and streaming of files, providing a cross-platform push notification, providing a centralized user and authentication store, integration with social networks, buisiness logic and more are easily implemented with SDKs for each platform.
If I were to list the three main advantages of BaaS, they are:
Ease of implementation
Ready-made back-end platform for cross-platform apps
Automatic scalability if your app becomes successful
As far as disadvantages, your backend feature set becomes dependent on the vendor, and you certainly get more flexibility with a custom solution, but that can often be overcome with business logic. In my own (admittedly biased) opinion, the flexibility and cost savings make it worth at least giving BaaS a try seeing if the feature sets meet your specific needs.
At my day job we have load balanced web servers which talk to load balanced app servers via web services (and lately WCF). At any given time, we have 4-6 different teams that have the ability to add new web sites or services or consume existing services. We probably have about 20-30 different web applications and corresponding services.
Unfortunately, given that we have no centralized control over this due to competing priorities, org structures, project timelines, financial buckets, etc., it is quite a mess. We have a variety of services that are reused, but a bunch that are specific to a front-end.
Ideally we would have better control over this situation, and we are trying to get control over it, but that is taking a while. One thing we would like to do is find out more about what all of the inter-relationships between web sites and the app servers.
I have used Reflector to find dependencies among assemblies, but would like to be able to see the traffic patterns between services.
What are the options for trying to map out web service relationships? For the most part, we are mainly talking about internal services (web to app, app to app, batch to app, etc.). Off the top of my head, I can think of two ways to approach it:
Analyze assemblies for any web references. The drawback here is that not everything is a web reference and I'm not sure how WCF connections are listed. However, this would at least be a start for finding 80% of the connections. Does anyone know of any tools that can do that analysis? Like I said, I've used Reflector for assembly references but can't find anything for web references.
Possibly tap into IIS and passively monitor the traffic coming in and out and somehow figure out what is being called and where from. We are looking at enterprise tools that could help but it would be a while before they are implemented (and cost a lot). But is there anything out there that could help out quickly and cheaply? One tool in particular (AmberPoint) can tap into IIS on the servers and monitor inbound and outbound traffic, adds a little special sauce and begin to build a map of the traffic. Very nice, but costs a bundle.
I know, I know, how the heck did you get into this mess in the first place? Beats me, just trying to help us get control of it and get out of it.
Thanks,
Matt
The easiest way is to look through the logs, but if that doesn't include the referrer than you may also want to monitor what is going out from your web to the app server. You can use tools like Wireshark or Microsoft Network Monitor to see this traffic.
The other "solution" and I use this loosely is to bind a specific web server to app server and then run through a bundle and see what it is hitting on the app server. You could probably do this in a test environment to lesson the effects on the users of the site.
You need a service registry (UDDI??)... If you had a means to catalog these services and their consumers, it would make this job of dependency discovery a lot easier. That is not an easy solution, though. It takes time and documentation to get a catalog in place.
I think the quickest solution would be to query your IIS logs and find source URLs which originate from your own servers. You would at least be able to track down which servers your consumers are coming from.
Also, if you already have some kind of authentication mechanism in place, you could trace who is using a particular service based on login.
You are right about AmberPoint. There are other tools that catalog the service traffic and provide reports showing what is happening to your services. Systinet, SOA Software and Actional also has a products similar to Amberpoint but Amberpoint has a free-ware version, I believe.