A Run Down Over Backend Development Process of Mobile Apps

Let’s have a close look at the importance and steps to be followed while backend development of mobile apps!

Emerging trends, technologies, and tools keep shaping the environment that the web or app developers India face themselves in with every new day. If there were static websites earlier, there were dynamic websites the next year. Then mobile apps were launched with responsiveness and then chat-bots emerged.

Emerging Trends in Mobile App Development

As we go across backend technologies that empower mobile app development, it is worthy to illustrate the emerging trends that will be in focus in 2019:

• Integration of Wearable Apps
• Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
• The rise in Blockchain Technology
• The surge of On-demand Apps
• Emergence of Chatbots
• Prevalence of Internet on Things
• Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality
• Introduction of Instant Apps
• Mobile Payment Services
• Increase in number of Cloud Storage Platforms
• Enhancement of App Security
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
• Beacon Technology
• Enterprise Mobile Management
• Application Performance Management (APM)

As almost every business owner around wants to improve their ongoing processes, this is one fundamental reason why we are here. This often involves improving front end UI/UX and backend database that empowers the entire website/app. Skipping the details of the technologies, let’s first figure out what is relevant in this context and the approaches that need to be followed to keep up the good work in 2019.

Tools and Techniques to Follow Mobile App Development Process

Looking up at the brighter side, here is an illustrative list of tools and technologies used in back end development:

• Web Server Tools - NGINX, Apache;
• Databases Tool - MySQL, MongoDB, MariaDB;
• Local Development Environment - WampServer, XAMPP, MAMP;
• GIT Clients - SourceTree, GitHub Client, Git Kraken;
• MicroService Platform Tools - Kubernetes, Docker;
• App Performance Test Tool - Apache JMeter, AppLoader;
• Collaboration Service Tools - Slack, Jira;

Discerning the Importance of Front-End and Back-End Development

Front-end development can be tricky as much as back-end development. At the extreme spectrum, it can require a need to have much stronger expertise. As an example, the Gmail interface involves lots of interaction in real time with ample drags and drops. Adding more to it, a sophisticated editor that's entirely custom designed (not just a drop-in component), that is probably a notch above back-end work in complexity. And Google sheets is another huge step up in complexity.

All the websites out there full of cruft and bogged down by loading 30 libraries they don't need, no optimization at all, 20 seconds or more until they're done the rendering. That's what happens when all the good programmers abandon the front end.

Backend Development Process

With the database, server and application in its place, let’s trace through the development roadmap being followed by most of the mobile app backend development companies:

1. Pick up a language – Out of the various available options like scripting language (Python, Ruby, PHP, Node.js (with optional typescript), etc.), and functional language (Elixir, Scala, Erlang, Clojure, Haskell, Java, and .Net) and others like Golang, Rust, etc.
2. Practice what you learned – Exercise and make some command line applications with your picked language.
3. Understand the basics of package manager for the language that you select, e.g.: PHP has composer, Node.js has NPM and yarn, Python has pip (a kind of package-management system), Ruby has gems, etc.
4. Learn the Standards and Best Practices – Each of the languages has its own standards and best practices of doing things. Study them for your chosen language.
5. Make and distribute same package/library – Now go ahead and create a package and distribute it for others to use and ensure to follow the standards and best practices that you have learned this for. Contribute to some open-source project and search for some projects on GIThub and open up some pull requests in open-source projects. Refactor and implement the best practices that you learned. Look into the open issues and try to resolve. Add any additional functionality.
6. Learn about Testing - There are several different testing types, but for now, learn about how to write unit and integration tests in the language you picked. Understand different testing terminologies such as mocks, stubs, etc.
7. Write tests for the practical steps above - Go ahead and write the unit tests for the practical tasks that you implemented in the steps before.
8. Learn Relational Databases – There are several options here. However, if you learn one, others should be fairly easy. Pick MySQL for now but learn how they are different and the UseCases (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, and Oracle).
9. Practical Time – Create a simple application using everything that you have learned this for. It should have registration, login, and CRUD. Create a blog, for example, where anyone can register and get a public profile page. Create, update and delete posts and the public page will show the posts created by them.
10. Learn the Framework
11. Practical Time – Make the same application you made in point 9 above to framework of your choice.
12. Make use of No-SQL Database – First understand what they are, how they are different from relational databases and why they are needed. There are several different options. Have a look at different options and see how they differ. If you have to pick one, pick MongoDB.
13. Caching – Learn how to implement app-level caching using Redis or Memcached.
14. Creating RESTful API’s – Understand REST and learn how to make RESTful API’s.
15. Authentication/Authorization Methodologies – Learn about the differences and how to implement them.
16. Message Brokers – Learn about the message brokers, understand the “why” and pick one. There are multiple options but I would go for RabbitMQ or Kafka.
17. Pick a Search Engine – As the application grows, simple queries on your database aren’t going to cut it out and you will have to resort it to a search engine. There are multiple options, each having its own differences.
18. Understand the need and use of Docker.
19. Knowledge of the web servers – There are several different options here, look at the different options, and understand their differences and limitations.
20. Learn how to use web sockets.
21. Learn Graph QL – While it is not required, feel free to have a look at it and see what it is all about and why they are calling it the new REST.
22. Look into Graph Databases - Again not registered but you should have a little understanding of what they have to offer.
23. All the things that weren't mentioned above like profiling, static analysis, DD, SOAP, and Go Figure!

Determiner

Mobile App Development has recognized a surge in demand with every second user owning a smartphone. Undoubtedly the technological innovation has never left its side, making it upright with periodic updates, applications, compliance policies, and security grounds. While the choice of choosing a backend or front end development tools might vary across businesses according to their specific requirements, subsequent steps discussed above form the fundamental process of backend development and are followed as such, with slight deviation (in rare cases). These also account for the varied cost of mobile apps across industries and choice of technologies.

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