Realm Object Server population, costs, sync - react-native

I have a simple app that pulls jobs in from a server and has two way sync App<-->Server. The jobs need to be able to be populated into either the App or the server.
Is there anyway for me to create this infrastructure using realm/react-native without paying $1500 a month?
I'd really like to use realm for this project but there is no way I can afford that much. Any ideas?
Thanks

It almost sounds like something you would be able to achieve with the developer edition which is free. With "populate", are we talking 1000's of jobs? And is that a one time task or continuous?
If you make react native app that operates with the Realm Object Server, you can have a special admin UI in it that uses an admin user, which would enable you to update a realm with new jobs.
If you need code running on the server to continuously update the jobs etc., it is probably not achievable with the developer edition as it stands today. You could set up a mac to do so but that is probably not feasible.

Related

How can I identify an Azure SQL Database as DEV only so that I do not get charged?

I have created a new Azure Database and I want to start developing against it. Is there a way to indicate that this database is a DEV only database? I do not want to get charged for it until I am ready to go to production. Is there such an option?
Additionally, a singelton Basic database starts at $5/month [link]. Combined with an Azure Free Trial [link], one can make this offer stretch quite a bit for a dev environment.
When you create new website you can also choose to create new free database for this website

Best Approach for syncing Azure SQL Database

Right now, our application only has one Web Site instance along with SQL Database deployed at Azure US datacenter. We are looking for deploying more Web Site instance at other datacenter such as APAC and Europe. There still be a local SQL Database for each of those web site instance. We would like end user could fail over to another instance if his registered instance is not available, such as if US web site instance is down, we could fail over user to Europe instance. With this, we would need to synchronize local SQL Database at all data centers, US, Europe and APAC.
So we are looking for what's best approach to implement the database synchronization here for Azure SQL Database. Here are what we found at this point:
Azure Data Sync, it looks like that it is the perfect choice since it is available right away at Azure Management Portal and it would be up and running with some simple configuration. However there seems couple catches. The feature has been on preview about 2 years now (see this link with the following quote from comment):
SQL Data Sync has been in preview for over 2 years and the last update was December 2012. Has this been abandoned? Is this a technology we should encourage our clients to use? There absolutely needs to be an ability to synchronize data between a local SQL DB and Azure but Microsoft seems to have dropped this and I'm leery of putting a client on this only to find that the plug has been pulled. You owe it to your users to give us some information
I also saw the post Azure data sync not syncing all databases at SO, it seems that this feature is a second class feature at Azure and MS doesn't really pay sufficient attention to it. So I am worried how good it is.
Microsoft Sync Framework, it seems a more generic sync framework and more suitable for client and server sync instead of sync among server database. Plus it is not simple as above SQL Data Sync which is available just by configuration at Azure.
Any other suggestions on sql database sync at Azure? It would be really appreciated if you could share your experience here.
Thanks very much in advance for your insight.
Update:
Azure Data Sync is built upon using Microsoft Sync Framework: see link, the quote:
Microsoft SQL Data Sync is a cloud-based data synchronization service built on the Microsoft Sync Framework technologies.
Since no one is answering this question and I am going to do it myself. Based on some latest information, the Azure Data Sync is buggy and can not be used for production at this point. I guess that's the reason why it never moves out of preview even after around 2 years. There is no other good approach for handling Azure SQL Database sync at this point unless you want to build something yourself.
you can use RedGate Data Compare to sync your Azuresql DB with your Local DB

Periodically update data in Sql Azure Database

I have an SQL Azure Database instance which provide data to a windows 8 app. The data in my database should be updated periodically (weekly). Is the any way to make it? I'm thinking of write a app which will run weekly and update the database. But still don't know how to make it run on Window Azure? Please help!
Thank you,
There are a number of ways to achieve this, does the data however need to come from a different source or can it be calculated?
Either way, seeing as you're already knee deep in SQL Azure I would suggest putting your logic into a worker role that can be scheduled to run your updates once a week. This would give you a great opportunity to do calculations and/or fetch data externally.
Azure gives you the flexibility to scale this worker role into numerous instances as well depending on the work load.
Here is a nice intro tutorial on creating a worker role on Azure: link
Write the application and set it to run through your cron job manager on a weekly time schedule. The cron job manager should be provided by your host.

Windows Service or SQL Job?

I have an archiving process that basically deletes archived records after a set number of days. Is it better to write a scheduled SQL job or a windows service to accomplish the deletion? The database is mssql2005.
Update:
To speak to some of the answers below, this question is regarding an in house application and not a distributed product.
It depends on what you want to accomplish.
Do you want to store the deleted archives somewhere? Log the changes? An SQL Job should perform better since it is run directly in the database, but it is easier to give a service acces to resources outside the database. So it depends on what you want to do,,,
I would think a scheduled SQL job would be a safer solution since if the database is migrated to a new machine, someone doing the migration might forget that there is a windows service involved and forget to start/install it on the new server.
In the past we've had a number of SQL Jobs run. Recently, however, we've been moving to calling those processes from .Net code as a client application run from a windows schedule task, for two reasons:
It's easier to implement features like logging this way.
We have other batch jobs that don't run in the database, and therefore must be in windows scheduled tasks. This way all the batch jobs of any type will be listed in one place.
Please note that regardless of how you do it, for this task you do not want a service. Services run all day, and will consume a bit of the server's ram all day.
In this, you have a task you need to run, and run once a day, every day. As such, you'd either want a job in SQL Server or as Joel described an application (console or winforms) that was setup on a schedule to execute and then unload from the server's memory space.
Is this for you/in house, or is this part of a product that you distribute.
If in house, I'd say the SQL job. That's just another service too.
If it's part of a product that you distribute, I would consider how the installation and support will be.
To follow on Corey's point, if this is externally distributed, will you need to support SQL Express? If not, I'd go with the SQL job directly. Otherwise, you'll have to get more creative as SQL Express does not have the SQL Agent that comes with the full versions of SQL 2005 (as well as MSDE). Without the SQL Agent, you'll need another way to automatically fire the job. It could be a windows service, a scheduled task (calling a .NET app, powershell script, VBscript, etc.), or you could try to implement some trigger in SQL Server directly.

Does Anyone Have Experience Creating an Occasionally-Connected Browser App With NHibernate?

We need to make our enterprise ASP.NET/NHibernate browser-based application able to function when connected to or disconnected from the customer's server. Has anyone done this? If so, how did you do it? (Technology, architecture, etc.)
Background:
We develop and sell an enterprise browser-based application used by construction field personnel to enter timesheet information. Currently, it requires a connection to the server back in the customer's office and we'd like to build an occasionally-connected version of the application for those clients without wireless Internet availability.
Our application is an ASP.NET application using NHibernate for O/R mapping. Being a Microsoft shop, the Microsoft Sync Framework is attractive, but we don't know whether it "plays well" with NHibernate.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
Dave T
Maybe you could operate some kind of offline version using a small version database (I hear good things about vistadb - http://www.vistadb.net/ which I believe does play well with NHibernate). With a syncing tool to copy data in when they are back on line. A click-once launcher could handle installation and integration.
Want to be careful with anything involving syncing though - if it is just single user timesheets that might be OK - but if there are any chances of conflicts in the online-offline data you might be better considering the problem from a different angle for pain-avoidance...
Why not couple it with Google Gears? People put their data in while offline, and then they can sync it when they reconnect to the server.
In a modern world, using the HTML5 data store:
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/html/HTML5-Client-Side/