Today, almost every sector has started to use mobile applications widely. All age groups of people also use different mobile applications to fulfill their requirements like paying bills, shopping, and others. All these apps come under Android/iOS app stores. These vast markets need vast requirements, and one of the biggest challenges and requirements for developing a mobile application is a database.
It is crucial to managing the enormous amount of data that is received and sent in the database to manage the application. For example, the first time your users sign-up with your app, they register. The next time they use the log-in option. The app has to technically manage their data in the database and respond to users quickly to help the em with logging in. You can understand the significance of a database in a mobile application.
Now, when you plan to develop a mobile application, you may get confused as to which database you need to select for the development. There are various database vendors on the market, which makes it harder to decide.
In this post, we shall see a few significant tips that will guide in selecting the right database for your mobile app.
What is a Database?
A database is a collection of structured information or data that is electronically stored in a computer system. It controlled and managed by a Database Management System (DBMS). The Data and DBMS, along with the applications associated with them are referred to as a database system, which is also known as a database.
Types of Databases
- Relational Database
A Relational Database is the most database used widely to store data. It stores different data in the form of a data table.
- Operational Database
The operational database has gained immense popularity among various organizations. It includes customer database, inventory database, and personal database.
- Data Warehouse
Often, firms and organizations need to keep their data for a long span of time. They can accomplish this with the help of Data Warehouse.
- Distributed Database
A few businesses have different workplace venues, and therefore, they need to have different databases for all of these locations. Distributed Database comes to the rescue in this situation by offering separate databases for different locations.
- End-user Database
When an organization needs to meet its end-users requirements, it uses the end-user database.
How to Choose the Right Database for Mobile App Development
- Determine the structure of the data
The structure of the data will determine how it will be stored and retrieved. Different applications deal with data in a variety of formats. Also, they select the database based on their data structures for storing and retrieving the data.
If you are not able to make the right selection, then your mobile app will be slow to retrieve the data from the database. As a result, the development time to work around the data issues will increase, which will slow down the development.
Data-related elements such as accessibility to data, size of the data you wish to store, the scope of multiple databases, and the speed & scalability also play a vital role.
- Do you require a flexible data modeling solution?
You can appropriately and effectively communicate with your data model requirements for your mobile app if your data model is flexible. The crucial part is that it should allow you to evolve your model efficiently according to the changing requirements.
Mobile applications evolve rapidly with the changing requirements, which has given rise to the quick model flexibility. When you have changing requirements, the relational database can prove to be the best to have strong data consistency. Also, it can be helpful in the case when the data is highly relational.
- What Client Platforms it Support
Do you plan to have iOS or Android, or both as your mobile app development platforms? Are you planning to go beyond and integrate the Windows platform as well? There are other things such as IoT devices, and wearables when you plan on supporting the platforms we mentioned here.
If you plan to support multiple platforms at a later date, then you have to consider it right now in this stage. Many organizations plan to evolve their web app or a native desktop app into a mobile application. Therefore, it is significant to keep this planning into consideration while developing these apps.
If you have a planning of moving forward in the same direction, then it is crucial to evaluate cloud options and databases. It should be based on the required platform support during the various processes of the application development.
- How much data security will you need?
A high level of consistent security is a must for every kind of mobile application, whether it is at rest or in motion. If you decentralize and synchronize your storage, then it becomes critical to ensure secure access and transmission.
Therefore, you need to look for aspects such as authentication, data in motion, data at rest, and read/write access when you consider your data security standards.
When you speak about authentication, it has to be flexible enough to allow authentication providers, including custom, public, and standard.
When you consider ensuring efficient security standards, you also need to consider the data residing on the server and the client. To access this data, you need to support file system encryption and data-level encryption.
As we mentioned about the data in motion, you need to ensure that all communication should be conducted on secure channels such as TLS or SSL.
- How will it resolve Data Conflicts?
When you use decentralized data for your mobile platforms, then they can experience frequent conflicts due to the simultaneous modification of the same data by multiple devices. Therefore, you will need a robust support mechanism to resolve these conflicts.
The flexibility of the conflict resolution mechanism holds a significant place in the entire scenario of resolving conflicts. Therefore, you should choose the one that enhances conflict resolution on the device with the help of a human or external system, in the cloud automatically.
Conclusion:
When you plan out your mobile app development, it is certainly not easy to choose the right database for your application. But, the tips and steps we discussed above will effectively help you select the best database for your mobile app.
When you hire iOS app developers for your iPhone app, make sure they have sufficient knowledge about databases and their integration.