Google offers the Firebase suite of application development tools, available free or at cost for higher degree of usages, priced flexibly accorded to features needed. The suite includes A/B testing and Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging (FCM) and in-app messaging, cloud storage and NoSQL storage (Cloud Firestore and Firestore Realtime Database), and other features supporting developers with flexible mobile application development.
$0.01
Per Verification
SQLite
Score 9.5 out of 10
N/A
SQLite is an in-process library that implements a self-contained, serverless, zero-configuration, transactional SQL database engine. The code for SQLite is in the public domain and is thus free for use for any purpose, commercial or private. SQLite is one of the most widely deployed databases in the world.
Firebase should be your first choice if your platform is mobile first. Firebase's mobile platform support for client-side applications is second to none, and I cannot think of a comparable cross-platform toolkit. Firebase also integrates well with your server-side solution, meaning that you can plug Firebase into your existing app architecture with minimal effort.
Firebase lags behind on the desktop, however. Although macOS support is rapidly catching up, full Windows support is a glaring omission for most Firebase features. This means that if your platform targets Windows, you will need to implement the client functionality manually using Firebase's web APIs and wrappers, or look for another solution.
SQLite is a lightweight and efficient database management system. With SQLite, performance increases as memory are added. It's reliable and well-tested before release. SQLite handles memory allocation and I/O errors gracefully. SQLite provides bug lists and code-change chronologies. All bugs are disclosed, and it's compatible with iOS, Android, MAC, and Windows. SQLite is open-source, allowing developers to tailor it to their specific needs.
Analytics wise, retention is extremely important to our app, therefore we take advantage of the cohort analysis to see the impact of our middle funnel (retargeting, push, email) efforts affect the percent of users that come back into the app. Firebase allows us to easily segment these this data and look at a running average based on certain dates.
When it comes to any mobile app, a deep linking strategy is essential to any apps success. With Firebase's Dynamic Links, we are able to share dynamic links (recognize user device) that are able to redirect to in-app content. These deep links allow users to share other deep-linked content with friends, that also have link preview assets.
Firebase allows users to effectively track events, funnels, and MAUs. With this simple event tracking feature, users can put organize these events into funnels of their main user flows (e.g., checkout flows, onboarding flows, etc.), and subsequently be able to understand where the drop-off is in the funnel and then prioritize areas of the funnel to fix. Also, MAU is important to be able to tell if you are bringing in new users and what's the active volume for each platform (Android, iOS).
Attribution and specifically multi-touch attribution could be more robust such as Branch or Appsflyer but understand this isn't Firebases bread and butter.
More parameters. Firebase allows you to track tons of events (believe it's up to 50 or so) but the parameters of the events it only allows you to track 5 which is so messily and unbelievable. So you're able to get good high-level data but if you want to get granular with the events and actions are taken on your app to get real data insight you either have to go with a paid data analytics platform or bring on someone that's an expert in SQL to go through Big Query.
City-specific data instead of just country-specific data would have been a huge plus as well.
Although it is excellent at what it does, you should be really careful and plan accordingly if you know that your database is going to scale at a huge level because it is not suitable of databases which are of Enterprise level and demands top-notch security and protection.
If your project involves multiple people working on the same database simultaneously, then that becomes a big problem, because it only allows single write at one time. You really need to be forward thinking in a manner to predict if this database will cater to all the needs of your project.
The most common difficulty with this is the lack of some of the basic functionality which is present in the other premier databases like Joints, Stored Procedure calls, Security and permission grants. If you do require all those things then you are better off not using this software.
Lastly, if you are using this in an Andriod App development cycle then also your options are limited because it does not integrate with PostgreSQL and MYSQL.
Firebase functions are more difficult to use, there are no concepts of triggers or cascading deletes without the use of Firebase functions. Firebase functions can run forever if not written correctly and cause billing nightmares. While this hasn't happened to us specifically it is a thing that happens more than one realizes.
I have had a wonderful experience with SQLite because in my every project I use SQLite in the development phase because it's really fast, doesn't crash and very easy to maintain as well. It saves a lot on physical memory and dedicated server usage. It has all the basic functionality you would need to get the job done and that too at no cost at all. What more could you ask for !!!
Our analytics folks handled the majority of the communication when it came to customer service, but as far as I was aware, the support we got was pretty good. When we had an issue, we were able to reach out and get support in a timely fashion. Firebase was easy to reach and reasonably available to assist when needed.
Before using Firebase, we exclusively used self hosted database services. Using Firebase has allowed us to reduce reliance on single points of failure and systems that are difficult to scale. Additionally, Firebase is much easier to set up and use than any sort of self hosted database. This simplicity has allowed us to try features that we might not have based on the amount of work they required in the past.
We looked at other traditional RDBMS products, but found them to be cumbersome to deploy. They take up more space, and consume more computing resources than SQLite does. While the performance or direct integration to our primary applications may have been better or easier if we had gone with a traditional RDBMS, the performance of SQLite has been more than acceptable. The performance and speed to deploy made SQLite a much more attractive option for us than a traditional RDBMS.
Makes building real-time interfaces easy to do at scale with no backend involvement.
Very low pricing for small companies and green-fields projects.
Lack of support for more complicated queries needs to be managed by users and often forces strange architecture choices for data to enable it to be easily accessed.
The active community has kept support costs low, further increasing ROI
The wide range of supported platforms and high level of compatibility has increased ROI by reducing time spent porting the database model to any platform specific solutions.
