

‘Firebase’ Does for Apps What Dropbox Did for Docs - mayop100
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/firebase/

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mgkimsal
I didn't dig deep in to the docs - just played with the demos - but if all
data is exposed as 'just' a URL - what implications are there for security?
Can someone mod the JS to grab someone else's data associated with my app?
They probably have answers for this, but it wasn't apparent in the demos I
looked at.

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mikelehen
Hey. Yeah, we have an ACL system for specifying who can read/write data at
each location. So you can lock down your application data to keep it secure.
The API for this is still in flux though, so it's not documented. Coming soon
though! :-)

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yrashk
How do you specify subjects of ACL — that is clients to have access granted
to?

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jerguismi
I don't really get the benefits. You don't need servers, but you need to host
the JS/html5 application somewhere, even if you don't need to configure the
database server etc.

It is nice technology, but I don't really see if it is worth the price (vendor
lock-in, technology lock-in, etc.)

~~~
jamest
Hosting can be handled much more efficiently / easily by someone designed just
for content distribution, like a CDN. Our own site is 100% server from a CDN,
which makes for very nice scaling characteristics. Also, it's free right
now...

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haberman
Or with a scheme like Chrome Apps, the browser could store the app locally.
The app could work offline and only use the server to sync/collaborate.

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padobson
This could be incredibly useful for full stack developers that need to do
mockups quickly, or have clients that are constantly calling them and asking
questions like, "Can you build me something like $data_driven_webapp_dujour".

If your client just needs something small, you could host it on Firebase.

I also like the possibility of hosting an entire data driven application on
Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files.

Looking forward to giving it a try.

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DennisP
From the How It Works page: "Developers include a JavaScript library in their
application which gives them access to a shared data structure (your
Firebase). Any changes made to that data structure are automatically
propagated to all other clients and to the Firebase servers....If a user
modifies a piece of data a callback will be triggered on every client allowing
it to respond to the change."

It sounds like every client gets a full copy of the entire database. You
wouldn't exactly want to run reddit on this.

Or am I missing something?

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mayop100
The actual Firebase website is at <http://www.firebase.com> (there didn't seem
to be a link in the article).

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speg
How does this work with Meteor? They said it was complimentary. Is there going
to be a Firebase Smart Package for Meteor?

    
    
      Michael Lehenbauer
      11:51 AM
      Potentially! Meteor supports a pluggable backend, so we're working on plugging Firebase in as the meteor backend. So you get the client-side help that meteor provides and the sophisticated, scalable backend of Firebase.

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democracy
Looks like something like parse.com for javascript folks...

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thisischris
As a frontend guy this is HUGE. I can build apps in hours/days instead of
taking weeks+ to learn node.js/ruby/etc.

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mcantelon
Sounds pretty cool and is in line with the trend of app logic moving to the
front-end. I'm naturally reticent to put all my data eggs in one vendor's API
basket, however (assuming this won't be open sourced). App Engine was supposed
to scale too and those who bought into that ran into a lot of problems.

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haberman
I'd love to see the host-proof scheme that ZeroBin uses, so users can store
sensitive data without having to trust Firebase.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832269>

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tseabrooks
So, I've wanted to do a number of things in the iOS / Android space that would
require some real time communications and a server. In my quick skim I didn't
see a mention of mobile APIs.

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marquis
This would seem to fit in well with all the Backbone.js tutorials showing up.
Will have a play, it looks interesting for quick client apps or demos.

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phlowbieuq
Looks sick! Can't wait to see the demos!

