I am designing a system (stack: MVC 5, EF6, SQL Server) which needs to capture a lot of information about user interaction with various components of the app.
E.g.
How much time a user spend on a particular screen.
What action is the user performing: viewing, editing a page/form
Idle time
Progress in a particular workflow
And show all this information on a Management dashboard which is part of the same web app.
The traditional way of doing this would be to fire a sql query when a certain action happens and save this information in the application database. The thing is that, I don't want to overload the main application server with all these tasks and this approach doesn't seem too robust to me.
I was reading about Application Insights (Telemetry and custom events) and it seems that it should work for my problem statement. The only problem is that it is very tightly coupled with Azure resources and portal dashboard (as per my understanding).
So my question is: Can I use ApplicationInsights package to capture metrics and persist the data in a local SQL database and show it on a custom dashboard?
I read about continuously exporting telemetry information from Azure Storage to Power BI or SQL DB but wont work for me because I cannot use Azure as an intermediary.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/documentation/articles/app-insights-export-telemetry/
Would really appreciate some guidance on this. Thanks.
You can use PowerBI dashboards, with direct integration to Application Insights, specifically, with Analytics queries you likely may use in this scenario.
Also, you can consider using Application Insights API (https://dev.applicationinsights.io/) to achieve this directly, including integration with some popular dashboards. Note that API is now in early preview, so we may introduce some changes, but the overall shape should be stable.
I am also curious what prevents you from using Azure - we'd like to learn more about it. Please be aware of the fact that Application Insights stores it data in Azure
For the specific case when you want to use just Application Insights SDK, while storing and analyzing the data "locally" in your tool of choice - this is also possible. (Note: in this case you only benefit from App Insights SDK and schema, leave the door open for future possibility to use full App Insights). To achieve that, you can consider implementing a custom telemetry channel - see here for some additional information: http://apmtips.com/blog/2016/01/31/telemetry-channels-update
While implementing this approach, you should you should be mindful about the volumes - I would advocate for decoupling it through some form of a queue mechanism, makes it easier to protect your app, balance the load and also monitor ...
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So, i'm relatively new to Vue, and I'm currently using it to build a small app that displays order data from Square's API.
I'm currently working on a stack that uses rails to make api calls using the square.rb gem. The frontend is entirely Vue which uses Pinia as a store, and there isnt going to be any kind of database behind this because reasons.
All data is provided directly via Square's API. I am currently polling to update order info, but my client wants to make this app truly real time, as it deals with food deliveries through ride-share companies and the purpose of this app is to show in real time statuses of orders for an in house screen at the restaurant.
Now Square has a webhook subscription service, and based on my reading it sounds like I can consume these to update my app, but there are a few logical leaps that I havent been able to make yet with how to get that data to the frontend of my app.
My questions are the following, with the intent being to connect the dots between the different technologies I might need to employ here to make this work. Kinda get a sense of what i'd need and where to link it up.
Can I use vue to consume webhook payloads directly and update through reactivity? That would be ideal, but I have found no docs yet that give me a good idea of whether thats possible.
If that is not possible, do I need to use some sort of socket connection (socket.io) to listen for these webhook updates?
If the current setup or proposed setup in the questions above is not feasible, what is a better solution for handling this while still using Vue?
It is also the first time to develop,
I want to make a diary app, but I don't know which database to use because I don't have basic knowledge of the database.
When I click on the calendar, I would like to post on that date
And I also need a picture that needs to be imported.
I can look for it even if I post this. I think it would be the fastest to ask. Thank you for reading my POST and hope everyone who reads has a nice day
Quick Answer: I would recommend persisting data on the users device instead of a cloud based database by using Core Data for the following reasons:
The content may be private or sensitive in nature, keeping it on the device is safer
Media attachments can become costly at scale, saving to device removes that burden from the developer
some cons of this route include the following:
Potential loss of Analytics by not using a cloud database such as Google Firebase
Cloud storage can be backed up in case the user loses their device (assuming they are not backed up via iCloud)
For a more thorough answer I recommend you provide more in terms of your objectives and audience.
I built an in-house app for selling tickets and checking-in students to our High School dances. At the moment the app can scan a QR code with the student's information and add their name to either a "Sales" list or "Check In" list. Then the app can export these lists to a CSV file and we compile all the data.
App works perfectly as expected. NOW I want to be able to sync data between multiple devices so that every device will see an up to date Sales and Check in list. The check in list is most important because then our faculty chaperones can all see who has arrived to the dance in real time. I figured I would need to build a server to hold all the data as opposed to on the individual devices like I am doing now (CoreData). Can anyone please give me guidance or advice as to where to go from here? I am using Swift and developing for iOS 10.
I would just answer the general approach to tackle this problem since the implementations would largely be depending on many factors (what database technology is available, the platform of the server, etc.)
You are absolutely right, you need a server to hold the data. Technically speaking, it is a database that holding the data. Thus, you need a database running on your server (there are tons of selections here: Maria DB, SQL Server, Mongo DB, etc.).
Next, you need to build a web service on top of the database so that the iOS app can interact with the database (add/delete/update/read rows). Web service is a very common layer in full-stack application since you normally don't access the database directly.
Finally, you need to guard your web service with some sort of authentication. I.e. you don't want any random person out there to be able to access your web service without permission. There are many implementations out there to secure your web service and you should be able to google that easily.
Firebase might be the easiest solution. Its pretty simple to setup, and its pretty simple to set up data persistence when you go off line. I'm big on trying to stick with the built in Apple services, but Firebase is hard to beat for simple apps.
Take a look at CloudKit, or perhaps Firebase or Azure, as services that will provide a back end server for you, and give you a tested SDK to build against.
I would like to sync a core data app with a user with a different iCloud ID and I am trying to figure out the most graceful way to do this. I do not want the data to sync with all users, but want to be able to sync among family members for instance. From the research I have done, I do not think I can do that using iCloud Core Data sync because it only syncs between devices with the same iCloud ID. I have looked at this stackoverflow answer and read a little bit about Ensembles, Parcelkit and TICoreDataSync, Parse etc., but it is not clear to me if any of those options will allow me to sync with multiple users. Does anyone have a good method for syncing a Core Data app with multiple users?
Ensembles and TiCoreDataSync might work. They can use Dropbox file syncing, so in principle they should work with Dropbox shared folders. I don't think these are the main intended uses, so I suggest contacting the developers and/or doing some good testing yourself before assuming this would actually work.
You'll need to think about the user experience, though. At a minimum, your users would both need Dropbox accounts and would have to set up a shared folder before beginning to sync data this way.
Parcelkit probably won't work. It uses Dropbox's data store API which, unlike other Dropbox services, doesn't appear to support shared data.
Services that do support this kind of sharing exist-- for example, Parse and Firebase-- but make sure to review their pricing carefully before using them. Also of course, there have been any number of projects that have their own custom server back end, but that obviously requires having someone on the team who can do that kind of work.
You need to think about other device types (Android at least) if you want your application to be reaching more users.
I'm doing the same now by the following way:
Setup an online database with proper web services (careful with implementation for security matters - DB should NEVER be exposed by anything other than the web services).
Create a Class for your communication with the server (using Class methods with security handling like authentication and authorisation).
Use the class in your app to communicate with the server (SQL operations are done on the server).
To integrate with CoreData you need to create the model in your app similar to the structure in the backend database. Then you need to create a similar class for the app that deals with only local CoreData.
A higher level class might be required if you want to make sure that operations done on both server and local data storage.
Besides, you have to implement a lot of conditions to make sure that data written in local ONLY after making sure that it is stored online (or create an engine for differed operations to run later).
Another Way if you are familiar with notifications:
Use structured notifications between devices for data operations in order to keep everything in sync with other users. The problem with this is the "Autonomy" of the operations. If two operations were done in approximately the same time, you have to find a way to make sure the order of the operations is done properly (maybe timestamp or something).
I'm looking into the same thing for my app and I 'think' you can do a fairly unsecured version of what you are after using using the public folder in cloud kit as mentioned in this question (no accepted answer at time of posting) : Private data sharing using CloudKit
You would need to find a way to differentiate between data that is truly public and those shared among the users you need and some level of authentication.
I'm going to try exporting a permission file with access permission in it to whomever I want to share with combined with a unique identifier located in that permission file.
Keep in mind, as mentioned in the comments of the linked answer, my implementation will be security by obscurity (thanks for that phrase) unless you find a way of adding proper validation to it but my data is relatively insensitive.
Hope this, or any ridicule in the comments, points you in the right direction : )
I know that there are a few questions like this, but the question is more in respect to this specifict situation.
Im developing a platform for taking tests online. A test is a set of images and belonging questions. Its being hosted on Azure and using MVC 4.
How I would love that if the user have taken half the test and the brower crashes or something makes it deviate from the test and comes back, it will give the option to resume.
I have one idea my self, but would like to know if theres other options. I was considering to use the localstorage. When a user starts a test, the information for the test is saved in localstorage and every time he moved on to a new image, it updates the local state. Then if the test-player is loaded it will check if any ongoing tests are avalible.
How could i do it? any one witch similar problem/solution.
Local Storage is not a good choice, because it is specific to each instance. That means if you have two instances of a Web Role (the recommended minimum), then each instance would have it's own local storage. They are not shared, and there is no way to access local storage on a specific machine.
You really have two options. You could use a database like SQL Azure, or use Azure caching. Azure caching is probably easier, since it's super easy to serialize/deserialize complex objects, but the downside is that caching is only valid for 72 hours. If a cached object isn't accessed/updated in 72 hours, it gets purged.
I would not recommend you storing this information on the client browser. The user has access to local storage, cookies, etc ... and could modify it. You could store the test start time in your database on the server. Then every time the user sends a request to the server in order to answer a question you would verify if the test is still active or the maximum allowed time has elapsed.