Firebase offers two cloud-based, client-accessible database solutions that support real-time data syncing:
Firebase Realtime Database: A NoSQL database that lets you store and sync data between your users in real-time. This makes it easy for your users to access their data from any device, whether it's web or mobile.
Cloud Firestore: Also a NoSQL database, Cloud Firestore offers more features, scalability, and complexity than the Realtime Database. It's designed to scale automatically, meaning it can handle large amounts of data and many users with ease.
The Firebase Realtime Database is a cloud-hosted NoSQL database. Data is stored as JSON and synchronized in real-time to every connected client. When you build cross-platform apps with our Android, iOS, and JavaScript SDKs, all of your clients share one Realtime Database instance and automatically receive updates with the newest data.
Here are some key features of Firebase Realtime Database:
Real-time: Unlike a traditional database, Firebase Realtime Database allows you to sync data in real-time. This means that every time data is updated on the server, the connected clients are notified instantly.
Offline support: Firebase apps remain responsive even when offline because the Firebase Realtime Database SDK persists your data to disk. Once connectivity is reestablished, the client device receives any changes it missed, synchronizing it with the current server state.
Accessible from client devices: Firebase Realtime Database can be accessed directly from a mobile device or web browser; there’s no need for an application server. Security and data validation are available through the Firebase Realtime Database Security Rules, expression-based rules that are executed when data is read or written.
Cloud Firestore is a flexible, scalable NoSQL cloud database that can store and sync data for client- and server-side development. Cloud Firestore gives you live synchronization and offline support along with efficient data queries. Its integration with other Firebase products enables you to build apps with a small amount of code and without managing infrastructure.
Here are some key features of Cloud Firestore:
Scalability: Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL document database that lets you easily store, sync, and query data at a global scale. It is designed to provide a great developer experience and simplify app development with live synchronization, offline support, and ACID transactions across hundreds of documents and collections.
Real-time updates: Cloud Firestore uses synchronization to update data on any connected device. This happens within milliseconds.
Complex and hierarchical data: With Cloud Firestore, you can store collections of data within documents. This hierarchical data structure allows you to build complex reads and writes and can scale to large data sets.
Strong consistency: Cloud Firestore features strong consistency, including distributed transactions.
While both databases offer unique features, your choice depends on your project needs:
If you need advanced querying and more complex data modeling, Cloud Firestore might be a better fit. It also scales better for larger applications.
If you're building something with real-time syncing, especially something that doesn't require complex queries, Firebase Realtime Database could be the way to go.
In conclusion, understanding Firebase Realtime Database and Cloud Firestore is crucial in deciding the right database for your application. Both offer real-time updates and are scalable, but they differ in data modeling, transactions, and how data is stored.