
Ask HN: Database for collecting research data in rural areas - thangngoc89
I&#x27;m designing an offline-first web apps that allows researchers to collect research data on-site in rural areas. The current requirements is that they would go out to areas with no electricity and fill out forms on their mobile devices. I choose mobile devices rather than laptop because everyone has it and with power banks, one can easily extend the battery.<p>At the end of the day, they would run return to hotel and sync the data with a remote or local server. I did my research and it seems like these are promising solutions:<p>- PouchDB (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;pouchdb.com&#x2F;)
- Gun.js (https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gun.eco)
- Roll my own<p>Do you have any experiences regarding this?
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jchanimal
Couchbase Mobile's Couchbase Lite for iOS, Android, etc is open source and
offers peer-to-peer sync. I'm not sure if it currently syncs with PouchDB
also, but I think it might.
[https://www.couchbase.com/products/mobile](https://www.couchbase.com/products/mobile)

Here is one user doing similar stuff with it:
[https://www.datanami.com/2017/11/07/african-hospitals-go-
dig...](https://www.datanami.com/2017/11/07/african-hospitals-go-digital-
nosql-mobile-tech/)

And here is an older iteration: [http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/couchdb-
zambia-healthcare.h...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2011/03/couchdb-zambia-
healthcare.html)

~~~
thangngoc89
Thank you very much for your response. I didn't know about Couchbase and its
relation with PouchDB. Those case study is also interesting as well. I'll take
a closer look at those.

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two2wyes
Have you looked into [https://datproject.org](https://datproject.org) ?

The dat protocol originated as well as a way to facilitate sharing in the
scientific community:
[https://www.datprotocol.com/](https://www.datprotocol.com/)

There is a project of a browser built on top of it:
[https://beakerbrowser.com](https://beakerbrowser.com) It's only nodeJS for
now, but maybe serves as inspiration.

~~~
thangngoc89
Thank you for responding. After a quick glance at datproject, I feel like it
is not a fit for me. Dat feels like a better torrent for archiving data, not a
protocol for building offline-first app with complex API

