Parse is the first of all these backend-as-a-service startups to face and solve the biggest problem in the web context: user authentication and data security.
By offering a full signup service with email verification and user-level control over the database they have eliminated perhaps the most redundant piece of work that just about every web app has had to implement.
Lock-in is of course a concern, but that hasn't prevent some AWS services from taking off big time. Perhaps in the near future one will see an open source project that offers an off-the-shelf backend with a Parse-compatible API, much like what happened to S3 and etc.
Pricing on the other hand is a concern, particularly if your service requires background workers that constantly update the database -- every update is an API request hit, and one can only wonder what they charge beyond their Pro account.
Overall, I think this is a huge step in the right direction. Because it's the 21st century and one shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time one writes a new web app.
"Lock-in is of course a concern, but that hasn't prevent some AWS services from taking off big time. Perhaps in the near future one will see an open source project that offers an off-the-shelf backend with a Parse-compatible API, much like what happened to S3 and etc."
I hope so. I agree that user authentication is a redundant piece of any app that needs to be implemented each time. But I don't like the third party lockin.
What if Parse goes out of business next week? Do I have to rewrite all my code that talks to them? I guess I could abstract it enough at the get go to prepare for this.
I think an open source project that isn't tied to a third party would be great.
I really wish they charged by something other than API requests..as it stands now, I would not even know a reasonable way to pass on the cost to my users.
Lock-in is of course a concern, but that hasn't prevent some AWS services from taking off big time. Perhaps in the near future one will see an open source project that offers an off-the-shelf backend with a Parse-compatible API, much like what happened to S3 and etc.
Huh. I kind of like that. It's a natural anti-monopoly. The service becomes more attractive the more API-compatible competitors it has.
I wonder how they're gaming out that threat. I mean, with an ordinary web host, it's kind of a hassle to switch providers. With something like this, it would take a one-line change and a one-button data-import tool to switch to a cheaper API-compatible provider, right? Talk about a commodity service ...
Parse is the first of all these backend-as-a-service startups to face and solve the biggest problem in the web context: user authentication and data security.
By offering a full signup service with email verification and user-level control over the database they have eliminated perhaps the most redundant piece of work that just about every web app has had to implement.
Lock-in is of course a concern, but that hasn't prevent some AWS services from taking off big time. Perhaps in the near future one will see an open source project that offers an off-the-shelf backend with a Parse-compatible API, much like what happened to S3 and etc.
Pricing on the other hand is a concern, particularly if your service requires background workers that constantly update the database -- every update is an API request hit, and one can only wonder what they charge beyond their Pro account.
Overall, I think this is a huge step in the right direction. Because it's the 21st century and one shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time one writes a new web app.