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A comment on Firebase expands to become a unified app platform. Parent comment

Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by guelo on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @04:34PM (#11725681)
Horizon is only the "realtime db" portion of Firebase and it's only for Javascript, not Android or iOS. The mobile app realtime network connection tech is especially tricky to get right without draining a user's battery by doing things like constantly polling the backend. I have not seen anything from RethinkDB along those lines.
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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by hiphipjorge on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @05:09PM (#11725986)
> by doing things like constantly polling the backend

RethinkDB doesn't require polling. It's like their #1 feature and differentiator from other non-sql databases.

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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by EGreg on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @07:57PM (#11726993)
What do they do?

We use websockets in our realtime platform.

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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by coffeemug on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @08:37PM (#11727141)
The Horizon client uses websockets to connect to the Horizon server. The Horizon server uses RethinkDB's protocol[1] to connect to the database.

[1] http://rethinkdb.com/docs/writing-drivers/

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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by guelo on Thursday May 19, 2016 @12:00AM (#11727861)
Websockets cannot be as efficient as native network management code.
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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by jkarneges on Thursday May 19, 2016 @01:00AM (#11728092)
What does this even mean? WebSockets can be used natively. In fact the Firebase client uses WebSockets, same as Horizon.
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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by guelo on Thursday May 19, 2016 @01:55AM (#11728301)
Sorry I was confused about terms, what I was thinking of was Javascript vs native. Native code can do more than a browser sandboxed client can.
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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by zeeshanm on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @06:02PM (#11726351)
Horizon uses push architecture by default so there is no need to pool.
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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by kuschku on Wednesday May 18, 2016 @05:27PM (#11726116)
> is especially tricky to get right without draining a user's battery by doing things like constantly polling the backend

One simple solution is giving each state a defined name, and keeping a socket open from mobile. If the connection is restarted, each side can name their current state, and the delta can also be easily synced.

Later on, changes can be directly transmitted via the socket.

(I am working on something like that currently myself).

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Re:Firebase expands to become a unified app platform by dmitriz on Thursday May 19, 2016 @04:36AM (#11728825)
I presume you can still use it with any mobile App wrapped as native e.g. via React Native or Ionic.
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