Open source native software libraries for Android and iOS have been released by Cloudant for developers to manage and replicate mobile application data on phones, tablets, and other occasionally connected devices. Dr. Dobbs brought this our direction in their article, “Cloudant Eyes “Occasionally” Connected Devices.” Both libraries are also API-compatible with Apache CouchDB.
This move is all about giving mobile developers the freedom to build offline access into their applications. The software libraries provide a simplified API with a device-local database indexing and query layer that supposedly matches the expectations of mobile developers more closely than cloud database semantics.
This is an interesting move, and one worth watching to see if it is a trend among mobile users.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
