Offline, the new trend of cloud services
Cloud services have become an excellent opportunity to make online applications accessible through any point of access to the Internet from the main devices: a computer, smartphone or tablet. According to the most recent survey conducted in 2012 by Everest Group and Cloud Connect, already 57% of companies consider themselves users of SaaS applications (Software as a Service) and 38% of users of solutions like PaaS (Platform as a Service). However, in the majority of reviews received from the clients of these services, it is noted that the inability to use the program in the "clouds" without access to the Internet is the main hitch in the development of this technology. Thus, the current goal of cloud services is offline, that is, to make SaaS applications usable when there is no access to the Internet. The problem directly concerns the productivity of users in the enterprise, since the performance gain was the main promise in the transition of applications to the "clouds".
Why has offline become the key theme of 2012, while SaaS applications that are accessible via the network already exist, and the HTML 5 web standard is provided specifically for this type of application? Simply all the parts in the collection today: the ability to create the same “cloud” application with some offline for the three main devices (computer, smartphone, tablet), for the main web browsers, as well as the ability to distribute them to the market.
A typical offline use case concerns moving users who have to deal with disconnections between different Internet access points. These are the days of a sales manager using CRM systems: he contacts his company's local network, while moving - to the 3G network, at the train station or at the airport - to Wifi, and from the client - to his local network, if the latter is available. At the same time, he may need to use a long flight or train ride to update the customer base, which is feasible provided that his CRM system, most often sharing software, is compatible with offline mode. Once access to the Internet is found, the new data will be synchronized with the “cloud” application. Synchronization means that all changes made during the offline session “reached” the application located in the “clouds”, and it, in turn, will synchronize them with other users.
When looking at the described case, it is obvious that offline is more important for smartphones and tablets. Today, you can use offline applications on major smartphones. So, the Evernote note taking application allows the user to have access to his notes in the “clouds” and on the mobile phone. Some versions of the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows 7 also support offline for premium users, which makes it possible to edit entries in the absence of web access. This offline mode is available for most of the so-called “native” clients of the main mobile platforms (like the Apple Store for the iPhone) on the market, especially due to the ability to store application data locally.
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Mobile platforms occupy a certain place on the market: Apple Store - for iPhone and iPad, Android Marketplace (renamed Google Play) - for Android smartphones. Web applications needed their own place in the market and, if possible, with a choice of offering offline. The online store Chrome Web Store, launched by Google in late 2010, this year offers publishers of applications available in the "cloud" to indicate whether their tools support offline mode. The New York Times, for example, provides an offline section of its information site. In addition to simply viewing the news portal and viewing it offline, there are Google Apps tools, such as: Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs; they include all functions for editing an e-mail or document offline with the subsequent synchronization of data.
For your information, during the annual Google I / O 2012 conference, Google announced that its Chrome web browser has 310 million active users! For your information, at the end of 2011, the Chrome Web Store had just over 30 million active users.
The offline technology's leading technology is HTML5, a new web standard supported by the latest versions of all browsers available on the market. It should be noted that offline is possible thanks to HTML5, but this is only one of the innovations that allows this mode.
For offline, each browser supports the first level of local cache. The local cache principle has always existed, starting with cookies. Subsequently, each browser turned to extensions or plug-in-specific, and therefore private. What has changed today is the existence of real web standards for local data storage, but especially the provision of these capabilities through a technical interface (API, Application Programming Interface), simple and standard.
Local data storage began with the Application Cache standard, the essence of which lies in the preservation of the application logic, as well as its user interface. Today you can go even further: capture new data generated by the user on his device, and save them locally. There are various local database standards, among which Web SQL was the most common, until it was abandoned by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a web standards organization.
The good news is that major market browsers have announced support for IndexedDB as a new local database standard. So, IndexedDB is supported by Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer browsers starting from version 10.
In addition to the availability of standards, when creating an application offline, you can equip it with other options. User information about offline detection is one of them. This first level of information is especially important when it comes to a shared tool or several participants modifying the same object (for example, the current tasks for a client’s project). This allows the user to know that the changes they have made will be saved, but will be visible to other users as soon as they have access to the web.
As soon as the connection is restored, the data is synchronized with the "cloud" application. For web-based sharing applications like GroupCamp, the essence of synchronization is different from that of personal-use programs like Evernote or Gmail, which are aimed at a single user. There are several approaches to this problem:
1. Always update changed data.
2. Offer data synchronization with the user indicating the number of objects (for example, new contacts created offline in the CRM-application sharing). The user can choose to continue synchronization or opt out of it.
3. Do not allow changes of an additional type: for example, allow the sales manager to add an entry in the client's document, but not to allow a change of the entry during synchronization of data that has been changed offline, so that the data will not be lost. Another option: do not allow making changes if the object has already been changed by another user during an offline session.
4. So that users take into account synchronization and time gaps to which it may lead, inform users how the object was changed, and provide the date of the change by the user and the date of synchronization (these dates differ in the case of offline mode).
Compatibility of groupware applications with offline mode raises the question of new local databases, since it will be necessary to process a large amount of information duplicated on different user devices. Another equally important problem is the ability to exploit and maintain the same “cloud” application, various characteristics in managing the offline mode when switching from one device to another, that is, for example, from iPhone to smartphone.
Why has offline become the key theme of 2012, while SaaS applications that are accessible via the network already exist, and the HTML 5 web standard is provided specifically for this type of application? Simply all the parts in the collection today: the ability to create the same “cloud” application with some offline for the three main devices (computer, smartphone, tablet), for the main web browsers, as well as the ability to distribute them to the market.
I Market Trends
A case of typical offline use in a company
A typical offline use case concerns moving users who have to deal with disconnections between different Internet access points. These are the days of a sales manager using CRM systems: he contacts his company's local network, while moving - to the 3G network, at the train station or at the airport - to Wifi, and from the client - to his local network, if the latter is available. At the same time, he may need to use a long flight or train ride to update the customer base, which is feasible provided that his CRM system, most often sharing software, is compatible with offline mode. Once access to the Internet is found, the new data will be synchronized with the “cloud” application. Synchronization means that all changes made during the offline session “reached” the application located in the “clouds”, and it, in turn, will synchronize them with other users.
Offline and mobility
When looking at the described case, it is obvious that offline is more important for smartphones and tablets. Today, you can use offline applications on major smartphones. So, the Evernote note taking application allows the user to have access to his notes in the “clouds” and on the mobile phone. Some versions of the iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows 7 also support offline for premium users, which makes it possible to edit entries in the absence of web access. This offline mode is available for most of the so-called “native” clients of the main mobile platforms (like the Apple Store for the iPhone) on the market, especially due to the ability to store application data locally.
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Chrome Web Store
Mobile platforms occupy a certain place on the market: Apple Store - for iPhone and iPad, Android Marketplace (renamed Google Play) - for Android smartphones. Web applications needed their own place in the market and, if possible, with a choice of offering offline. The online store Chrome Web Store, launched by Google in late 2010, this year offers publishers of applications available in the "cloud" to indicate whether their tools support offline mode. The New York Times, for example, provides an offline section of its information site. In addition to simply viewing the news portal and viewing it offline, there are Google Apps tools, such as: Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs; they include all functions for editing an e-mail or document offline with the subsequent synchronization of data.
For your information, during the annual Google I / O 2012 conference, Google announced that its Chrome web browser has 310 million active users! For your information, at the end of 2011, the Chrome Web Store had just over 30 million active users.
II Technology offline mode
The offline technology's leading technology is HTML5, a new web standard supported by the latest versions of all browsers available on the market. It should be noted that offline is possible thanks to HTML5, but this is only one of the innovations that allows this mode.
For offline, each browser supports the first level of local cache. The local cache principle has always existed, starting with cookies. Subsequently, each browser turned to extensions or plug-in-specific, and therefore private. What has changed today is the existence of real web standards for local data storage, but especially the provision of these capabilities through a technical interface (API, Application Programming Interface), simple and standard.
Local database
Local data storage began with the Application Cache standard, the essence of which lies in the preservation of the application logic, as well as its user interface. Today you can go even further: capture new data generated by the user on his device, and save them locally. There are various local database standards, among which Web SQL was the most common, until it was abandoned by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a web standards organization.
The good news is that major market browsers have announced support for IndexedDB as a new local database standard. So, IndexedDB is supported by Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer browsers starting from version 10.
Data discovery and synchronization
In addition to the availability of standards, when creating an application offline, you can equip it with other options. User information about offline detection is one of them. This first level of information is especially important when it comes to a shared tool or several participants modifying the same object (for example, the current tasks for a client’s project). This allows the user to know that the changes they have made will be saved, but will be visible to other users as soon as they have access to the web.
Cloud Sharing Case
As soon as the connection is restored, the data is synchronized with the "cloud" application. For web-based sharing applications like GroupCamp, the essence of synchronization is different from that of personal-use programs like Evernote or Gmail, which are aimed at a single user. There are several approaches to this problem:
1. Always update changed data.
2. Offer data synchronization with the user indicating the number of objects (for example, new contacts created offline in the CRM-application sharing). The user can choose to continue synchronization or opt out of it.
3. Do not allow changes of an additional type: for example, allow the sales manager to add an entry in the client's document, but not to allow a change of the entry during synchronization of data that has been changed offline, so that the data will not be lost. Another option: do not allow making changes if the object has already been changed by another user during an offline session.
4. So that users take into account synchronization and time gaps to which it may lead, inform users how the object was changed, and provide the date of the change by the user and the date of synchronization (these dates differ in the case of offline mode).
As a conclusion
Compatibility of groupware applications with offline mode raises the question of new local databases, since it will be necessary to process a large amount of information duplicated on different user devices. Another equally important problem is the ability to exploit and maintain the same “cloud” application, various characteristics in managing the offline mode when switching from one device to another, that is, for example, from iPhone to smartphone.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/155493/
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