Comment by j_s
13 years ago
This is one of the main reasons CouchBase was created. Its community has fragmented as the company tries to figure out how to make money, but it would be worth your time to check it out. Here the Xamarin folks explain their new CouchBase Lite wrapper: http://blog.xamarin.com/simplifying-persistence-with-a-docum...
This is just exactly what I was looking for, thank you! I especially like that it's document oriented and that replications/merges are handled in the simplest way possible, by presenting the most recent revision ID and giving the application the option to inspect previous revision IDs and use custom logic or ask the user which revision to use.
I think where they perhaps missed the boat is that nearly every app that needs to synchronize across devices needs this, but I'm having trouble finding a simple SAAS plan. When I was younger I was interested in hosting my own database but now I'm just not. I want to pay a few bucks and have someone else do it.
So on that note a possible startup idea is to host couchbase and charge for it. I think the core of the problem is that app sales are one-time, so a subscription model may not be appropriate. But the bandwidth will typically be so small that it won't matter. So that puts the total value per user maybe in the 25 cent range. How many million new users per year would it take to gross a million dollars.. I can see their dilemma. But, I think there is something to this. Whoever pulls it off could be the next dropbox but for databases. If this all clicks for someone, look me up!