Wijmo and Cloud Data

Managing data in the cloud is not always easy.

Wijmo has always had a CollectionView class that exposes arrays as data sources with sorting, filtering, grouping, paging, editing, and currency management. There is also an ODataCollectionView class that extends the base class with support for OData sources, which can be on the cloud.

But exposing OData endpoints for your database may not be an easy task, so we are introducing two new options for dealing with data on the cloud:

• The GoogleSheet class makes it easy to show and edit data from Google Sheets in your Wijmo applications.

  Google Sheets are easy to set up and use, and they perform well with relatively small datasets. Of course, they are not real databases. You should not use them to store large tables (say with a hundred thousand items), and you should not store mission-critical data in them. But they can be super useful in many situations, and many people have lots of data stored in Google sheets.

  • Read more about Using Google Sheets with Wijmo

• The Firestore and Snapshot classes make it easy to show and edit data from Firestore databases in your Wijmo applications.

  Firestore is Google's new flexible, scalable NoSQL cloud database. It was designed to store and sync data for the client and server-side development. Unlike Google Spreadsheets, Firestore is a real database. You can use it to store huge amounts of data, and it is much easier to set up and use than traditional SQL products.

  • Read more about Realtime Firestore Updates with Wijmo Snapshot Class
  • Read more about Using Firestore Databases with Wijmo

Should you use one of these? Maybe. You might have noticed is that there’s no “one-size-fits-all” database product that meets all the needs of all possible project requirements. Each product is built for a specific realm of use cases, each very different from each other.

So how do you decide which database to choose? It is about picking the right tool for the job. Selecting a database that does not suit the needs of your project can cause problems, but you might not realize it until well after you have committed to the database.

Google Sheets and Firebase are options that might suit some of your projects. They are very different from each other and traditional SQL-based database products.