Data-driven applications have several options and personal preference may prevail in your decision to choose one over the other. All the options may work for you, but some cloud services have different options. MySQL accounts for the majority of cloud development. Whether you are looking for the cloud to sync data, back up, or just read cloud data for your application, cloud services are becoming more popular to develop. 

Case Study of Storm: A Data-Driven, Cloud-Based Solution 

Storm POS™ offers all the integrated mobile solutions a store in the food service, hospitality, or retail industry might need. It helps large retail establishments save time and money over traditional POS systems, while retaining the ability to customize the entire system around their specific brand. 

Mobility and streamlined integration is where the retail and service industries are heading. Large retail establishments are beginning to change the way typical business is performed, and expect their technology to keep pace with an increasingly smart and mobile world. Storm POS mobile software products and services provide businesses a chance to get ahead of the competition by supplying them with sleek, efficient, and intuitive mobile tools.For more here iOS development course online

Case Study of iCloud: Storm Manager App 

Working alongside the point-of-sale system is the Storm Manager app. Optimized for tablets, the Manager app works as an analytics tool with the ability to view employee, inventory, and sales analytics, and create actionable reports. This app works in tandem with the point-of-sale, not only behind the scenes, but directly, by allowing cashiers to alert managers of various issues at the register in a discreet and efficient manner. So when a cashier needs change, an item is not on file, or an item needs to be voided, the manager’s tablet can be alerted for swift action. 

If the Point-of-Sale app is the featured app of the Storm solution, the Manager app is the central hub of the operation, pulling large amounts of data and metrics from the database for many uses. 

The Manager app creates and adjusts prices, sets inventory, and helps create ads for print. To be able to perform all these functions, extensive work needs to be performed on the database. It is a large app, requiring complex algorithms and swift communication to take place on the cloud server.Managers and administrators at the store are going to be working on multiple devices, often at the same time.  

After they use a device they may switch to another device once they get home, or they may need to look at a report on a different device. As the managers in this ecosystem access and save documents and key data from the iPad, it is uploaded to the cloud, where it can then be accessed and updated on the iPhone. The reporting data from the device is then backed up on iCloud where it can be accessed from different devices from the same manager. 

Case Study of Azure: Grocery Store Customer Application 

We can develop apps specifically for the use of customers. These apps have the ability to integrate directly with the Storm applications. Options include allowing customers to make shopping lists of items in the database, or when used in tandem with the Stock app, allowing them to preorder specific items so that stock employees can have them ready when customers arrive at the store. 

As this book is being written, we are about 8 to 12 months into the cycle of an Azure SQL database and what that service offers. We talked about some possible scenarios, but one real-life scenario takes place in the Customer app in our grocery store suite of apps. The primary reason we chose to use this database is because the Customer app needs to be cross-platform. It’s not possible for the grocery store to reach everyone who they want without a cross-platform app.  iOS Online Course

The app needs to support not only Android and iOS, but Windows 8 as well. This is a spot where Azure has a clear advantage over iCloud’s SQL database and a standard MySQL database. 

We created a customer application that has backend database connections. In this customer application we feel it would be good to have a customer loyalty program. We want to keep track of the user interactions with the database and push notifications to regular users to send them special offers or other information based on their user’s information within the database. 

MySQL is another option, as is Backend as a Service offering such as Firebase, or another SQL store such as PostgreSQL. Writing an API to connect to these mobile services from each one of the devices is certainly manageable. Currently, we’re using MySQL in this scenario for users to access the database from the customer application. We will be moving into it as your database because of the ease of service and the tracking capabilities and the fact that it has built-in reporting. 

Case Study of MySQL: Storm Point of Sale Application 

 Once the applications are online and accessing the database API in real time, we write SQL statements to supply the data for subsequent calls from that connection. We also want to make sure that we are connecting and addressing that data based on the cache set up to allow for smooth user experiences. Because this application is mission critical, we never want to lose data, even if we lose a connection