I have been learning iOS and Swift for just under a year now and previously had very little tech knowledge. I am working on an app where I am about to attempt building an email login and sign up process, followed by a basic “Twitter like news feed” using Firebase.
I am a complete novice when it comes to databases and was wandering if anyone had any suggestions for books I could buy on databases (for a beginner)? I believe Firebase uses a NoSQL Database.
I have already bought “NoSQL For Dummies” online and I am still waiting for it to be delivered. Any suggestions would be more then welcome.
I always think having a good basic understanding of RDBMs is a good start. I would also just ask, are you sure that your system would require a NoSQL solution? SQL/RDBMs I feel are easier to understand and query than NoSQL. SQLite is a really good RDBMs. I realize that this doesn’t answer your question, but something to think about maybe
To be honest I am not sure whether my system requires NoSQL, its just what is provided by the Firebase Database:
“A cloud-hosted NoSQL database. Data is stored as JSON”
Firebase seems to be the only solution I can find where someone of my experience and working on their own could potentially implement an email login and sign up process and hopefully a news feed. So think I am stuck with using NoSQL.
Firebase may be a good starting point for you as it helps you “quickly” implement something that works.
Using CloudKit (although tutorials even here are outdated) can be a good starting point also, not for logins/emails, but it helps you delegate the login/security to Apple, by linking the user’s account to iCloud.
Anyway, I second Jonny’s idea on having a minimum understanding on RDBMS, I highly recommend checking even simple Youtube short videos (marked for beginners) just to have an idea on what it is.
After that, if you develop mainly on iOS, playing with some tutorials of core data let you very quickly get a handle on it. But you’d still need to learn a server-side language (if PHP, a framework like Laravel can let you quickly set up your DB relationship without knowing SQL).
How about you start with Stanford courses on iTune-U? … These are university level courses, and course of Paul Hegarty are probably the best out there, they have both the technical implementation, but more importantly, the logic/science and good practices.
