The Firebase platform, one of the key tools in Google’s Android ecosystem has launched Google Cloud Firestore– a NoSQL document database that comes with a variety of features for developers. Since Google acquired Firebase in 2014, the tech giant was having plans to revamp the Firebase Realtime Database. Cloud Firestore is a fully-managed NoSQL document database built on top of Google Cloud Platform that offers high reliability and performance.

Cloud Firestore is a highly secured, cloud-hosted, NoSQL document database. Currently, native SDKs are available for iOS, Android, and web applications, that you can access directly. Cloud Firestore is also available in native Node.js, Java, Python, and Go SDKs, in addition to REST and RPC APIs.

Here are the top five features of Cloud Firestore:

• Provision for offline database usage: Cloud Firestore facilitates database synchronization in near real-time, cross-device syncing, and cross-device collaboration. Users can continue to use the application while offline, and database sync happens when the connectivity is restored.

• Automatic scaling: It is designed to automatically scale based on user demand. Regardless of the size of the database, you will get the same performance out of it. Query time will not depend on the size of the database. Cloud Firestore performs automatic, multi-regional replication to reduce any latency.

• Focus on serverless development: Google wants to make the cloud more accessible to developers. Cloud Firestore comes with ample support for serverless development. It is possible to integrate your app with your cloud database without having extra authentication servers.

• Emphasis on robustness: Cloud Firestore is deemed to become a more robust solution than the Firebase Realtime Database. This is designed to solve some of the pain points of Firebase related to structuring, scaling, and querying. It is also possible to use both the Firestore and Firebase Realtime databases together, as both are designed to integrate with each other.

• Expressive querying: Using this, it is easy to retrieve individual or specific documents or all documents that match your query parameters. Queries are indexed by default so that query performance becomes proportional to your result set, not your data set.

Why should you opt for Cloud Firestore as your database?

When we revisit this blog in 2020, Google has introduced features that will improve scalability, performance, and functionality when compared to its previous versions. Let us look at some of the advantages of choosing Cloud Firestore:

Cloud Firestore is an economical database solution that charges fees only for the operations performed, network bandwidth, and storage. The usage tab helps you keep track of your expenses at any given period.

• Cloud Firestone follows the ACID (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability) properties for transactions. Another attractive property of Google Firestone is its ability to perform indexed queries by combining filtering and sorting in a single query.

• Since Cloud Firestore is a Google product, it combines the prowess of the scalable Google Cloud and Firebase Realtime Database.

• It offers live synchronization and support and is quite beneficial in prototyping, and iterating easily due to its serverless properties.

• It provides excellent security for both mobile and web-based platforms. It also offers multi-region replication that ensures that your data is secure even in the event of a disaster.

While there are a plethora of database options available to choose from, Google’s Cloud Firestore has some definite advantages and would prove to be a class above with its robust security and scalable features.

Zerone develops scalable cloud solutions be it lift-and-shift, cloud-native, or DevOps solutions. Learn more about our varied capabilities here.