Google’s Firebase and Cloud Platform line of services has a new member meant to help app developers focus on developing their app instead of worrying about cloud functionality, and it’s called Cloud Firestore. The product is a database and underlying framework. Developers can take advantage of Cloud Firestore to handle cloud data storage and administration automatically, eliminating the need for developers to host and maintain their own servers. Cloud Firestore is fully integrated with Firebase and Google Cloud Platform, and is even mostly interoperable with a similar product, Firebase Realtime Database, though Google does note that they are not in-place replacements for one another, and there are some use cases where it may actually be practical to use the two alongside each other.
Cloud Firestore is more than a simple server, cloud database, and serving platform. Developers can not only store and administer user data on it, but can also query and organize data thanks to built-in documenting functions, sync between devices in real time, and even take advantage of an offline option that can store a copy of the database on devices locally, allowing apps to work offline in mostly the same way that they would work with a connection. Cloud Firestore also boasts the advantage of being distributed and stable, minimizing downtime. SDKs are in the works for a wide range of coding languages and platforms, with Java, Go, Python, and Node.js already available.
Cloud Firestore integrates cleanly with any product built on Google Cloud Platform or Firebase as a backend, which means that it can easily be used across platforms and device architectures. Almost any app can be integrated with Cloud Firestore, so long as it’s compatible with one of the languages and platforms that SDKs are available for, or can be hooked into Google Cloud Platform or Firebase. This puts intense serving tasks for things like neural networking apps, massively multiplayer online games, and apps that save customer data in the cloud to sync across devices well within the reach of almost any developer who’s willing to pay for the service and is experienced enough to integrate it into their app stack.