Has your organization identified that you need a strategy for developing a mobile application? Are you in charge of choosing the right tools and making the right choices for taking a leap into a Corporate Mobile Strategy? If so, you must be probably overwhelmed by the variety of mobile offerings in today’s market. Addressing the unique needs of your organization, this article intends to bring to light some backend considerations you need to be wary of for your web and mobile application development process which can be the telling difference between an efficient and a wasteful development process.
In this world of digital media, traffic volume has taken a mammoth leap forward. Website and mobile application developers and technical architects have to be extra cautious while designing and writing new systems. End users don’t have that patience to keep staring at their screens for more than three seconds waiting for your page to load. They want ultra-fast apps.
Definitely now the big question is “How to make your application cater to the need of huge traffic and still be super-fast, smooth and efficient?” Without any doubt the answer is that this can be achieved with the right planning and asking the right questions so as to develop a robust, secure and scalable backend.
There are a few things the best developers take care of, before jumping into writing the implementation and going about developing your app. What are those few little things which can totally change the approach, avoid months of extra work and save loads of effort and money? What are the kind of things which the experts rather care about now than later? What are those little considerations that can set the platform for a smooth mobile app development? Let’s find out.
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1. Connect with cloud based systems:
Cloud Computing is an undying necessity which sits back and lets you enjoy the flavors of a successful functionality integrated with your application. The key benefits of using cloud computing is its scalability. Cloud computing allows your business to easily upscale or downscale your IT requirements as and when required. Most cloud service providers allow you to increase your existing resources to accommodate increased business needs or changes. This will allow you to support your business growth without expensive changes to your existing IT systems.
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2. Component Based Development Methodologies:
Component Based Software Development (CBSD) is a concept that facilitates the creation of flexible, reliable and reusable systems. Such paradigm relies on the concept of building an application component which is meant have reusable pieces of code.
It is advisable that each of the component should have some clearly defined functionality and must be independent of the whole system. Also, within a well-defined architecture these components must communicate with each other using apt interfaces. -
3. Test Driven Development:
A very crucial computer programming methodology TDD (Test Driven Development) must not be overlooked. This computer programming method comprises of small iterations. This method implies writing the test cases covering the new functionality. Next you write production code which could necessary make the test pass and finally you refactor the code to make it more maintainable. Running Unit Tests in Test Driven Development gives you fast confirmation of whether your code behaves as it should or not.
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4. Backend as a Service (BaaS):
BaaS (Backend as a Service) is another must-have approach which many web and application developers need to follow. It also provides a way to connect their applications to backend cloud storage while it also offers some common features such as user management, push notifications and social networking integration. BaaS also offers some features that mobile users demand from their apps.
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5. MVC Framework:
Another essence for successful and full-proof backend support system is the MVC framework i.e. Model View Controller. Working in a scalable MVC architecture, developers can separate business logic, data base access and presentation. Therefore it helps in easy maintenance of code and reduces the maintenance cost at client ends over the period of time.
Successful implementation of mobile app development is quite challenging which involves performance and quality optimization on top of app functionality. Slow and bug-riddled apps negatively affect the return on investment and can eventually harm your company’s reputation.
Henceforth, the ‘backend’ of mobile app development has to be tailored to target the audience’s specific needs. Apps may have been designed to do simple things in the simplest of manner but for that they require plenty of complexity within their supporting infrastructure.
In the end I believe there are maybe many decisions that can be and are needed to be made after the development process has started or after the release of the app. But of those which are needed to be taken earlier, make sure you take them when the time is right to save loads of time, effort and money.
References:
https://businesscollective.com/important-considerations-in-mobile-app-development/
https://ist.berkeley.edu/is/database/services/selecting_a_platform
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/solutions/soa/newsletter/june12/top_ten.html
http://bit.ly/1Ks4GUV
https://www.developernation.net/blog/five-popular-databases-for-mobile/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/04/frameworks-round-up-when-to-use-how-to-choose/
http://agiledata.org/essays/tdd.html
http://baas.apievangelist.com/
http://bit.ly/1HOIVye
http://bit.ly/1RqD8n8
Rachit Agarwal
