Solutions for iOS collaborative sync (iCloud CoreData, CouchDB)?
- by mluisbrown
I'm developing an iOS app where one of the features will be allowing users to share and collaborate on data (e.g. lists). From everything I've read and based on the way that iCloud CoreData sync works I assume that it would not be a good fit for the following reasons, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything, as I'd prefer not to use a 3rd party syncing solution if at all possible:
iCloud sync of any kind (CoreData, Document or Key / Value pairs) can only ever be between devices that use the same iCloud account, so it's designed for a single user syncing data over multiple devices. Any kind of collaborative sync (several people editing the same document / list) simultaneously would be limited to everyone have the same iCloud account. Cases of people sharing the same iCloud account is usually limited to, for example, husband and wife or similar close relationships for a small number of people.
iCloud Core Data sync is for ensuring that each sync'd device has the same data. It doesn't seem to allow syncing just a subset of the data, so scenarios in which each user has their own documents and is only sharing / collaborating on a subset of them are not supported.
And I'm not even mentioning the well document problems with iCloud CoreData syncing which may or may not have been resolved with iOS 7.
Given the above, it would seem that CouchDB (with TouchDB) would be a better option, as it seems to support everything I need. What other options are there that people can recommend?
