Cloudant has announced open source, native Sync software libraries for Android and iOS, making it easier for developers to build offline access in their mobile applications.
The libraries are used to manage and replicate mobile application data on phones, tablets and other occasionally connected devices, Cloudant said Tuesday. They are immediately available under Apache License Version 2.0 for developers working with Cloudant's NoSQL database-as-a-service. Both libraries are also compatible with Apache CouchDB.
More companies are offering hosted services that mobile developers can rely on to add functionality such as storage, messaging and, in this case, offline access. The goal is to help remove the complexity of building and managing these features.
The libraries provide a simplified API (application programming interface) with a device-local database indexing and query layer, more closely matching the expectations of mobile developers than the cloud database semantics of other mobile sync libraries, according to Cloudant.
Sync stores application data on the device's local database, enabling applications to collect and access data even if network connectivity is unavailable. When a device re-establishes connectivity, the software synchronizes changes with a remote Cloudant or CouchDB database, the company said.
For Android developers who want to learn more, Cloudant will host a webcast March 4 for a one-hour walk-through of Sync for Android. The company has also posted documentation, code examples and GitHub repositories on a dedicated website.
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