Mobile Data: Embeddable and Beyond

A recent article on mobile databases discusses how embeddable databases can be used on mobile devices, allowing your mobile application to satisfy its storage needs without having to rely on back-end storage services.  But for enterprise mobile applications becoming more prevalent in business environments, this is not always possible or desired. We must preserve data security and avoid data synchronization issues.

Leave It to OData

What if you could leave the data access and API management up to someone else, and attain near real-time connectivity to data in the cloud or even in the enterprise behind a firewall?  That’s what a premium OData provider does, enabling access to a broad spectrum of cloud and enterprise data using a standardized REST API from your mobile application.  While embeddable, lightweight, self-contained databases can be beneficial for individual non-business users, the ability to access a wide variety of data sources through a unified interface can satisfy a range of requirements for enterprise mobile applications.

During the recent Cassandra Summit in San Francisco, I talked to a vendor about doing just that.  While developing a number of applications for mobile devices, they worked with us and DataStax to figure out the optimal method to connect their mobile applications to access several data sources, including but not limited to Cassandra.  This data connectivity solution needed to retain the security aspects of the data, with encryption and user authentication.  And it also needed to avoid data replication that creates latency and makes it impossible to keep the data up to date.

Given a typical scenario like this where a mobile application needs to use a database that is hosted in the cloud, or even one residing on-premise in a business network, what is the better solution? Should you connect remotely to it in order to access the data or should you embed a database locally on the mobile device?  The latter eliminates the need for an active, fast network connection, but embedding a database comes with some major drawbacks in a business environment—including compromises in performance, data security and data accuracy.

Connectivity to All Your Data Sources

Progress® DataDirect Cloud™ uses OData for mobile and web applications with support for a standardized REST interface to provide high-performance data connectivity a wide range of data sources in the cloud and the enterprise.

You can learn more about our data connectivity solutions. Check us out at: http://www.progress.com/products/datadirect-cloud

Read more blog posts that go into more specific use cases involving our highly efficient data connectivity at http://blogs.datadirect.com

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