The Concordant.io Platform open source project
More power to your edge app
Concordant.io: The next generation
Concordant turns the traditional BaaS design on its head. Concordant is local-first; it enjoys fast response and is always available. It seamlessly supports online and offline mode for apps, and is designed for collaboration. However, Concordant can leverage the cloud when advantageous: for stable storage, notification services, or data analytics, among others.
Concordant simplifies the development of new mobile applications, or enriching an existing cloud-based application with edge and mobile capabilities.
Concordant's unique features empower the developer of edge and mobile apps, while making development easier than ever. Let's take a look of what's under the hood.
Local-first Design
Thanks to its local-first design, Concordant provides a smooth experience to users. Data on the device remains available and consistent, even across device restarts, and even when connectivity is poor. The app on the device does not need to wait for a cloud server. This asynchronous data- sharing model guarantees seamless transition between online and offline periods. Close-by devices exchange data directly, without depending on a pre-existing infrastructure. Data is synchronised and backed up in order of priority, in order to make the best of available bandwidth, even over flaky networks.
CRDT data model
Concordant uses the CRDT data model. With CRDTs, data located on a device can always be modified, even in the presence of failures and disconnection. CRDTs implement automatic conflict resolution, using mathematically-proven rules. CRDTs are an industry-tested technique that has been adopted in multiple commercial products. Concordant offers an extensive set of efficient CRDT data types, with resolution policies adapted to your app. CRDTs ensure that, even when multiple users update the same data, it converges on all devices, concordant with business logic and with user expectations.
Consistency beyond CRDTs
CRDTs provide the foundation, convergence; but guaranteeing the correctness of an application may require more. Concordant provides consistency beyond CRDTs, and enforces correctness across objects, with built-in support for: highly available transactions, providing atomic updates while remaining available in the presence of failures and disconnection; referential integrity, making sure that cross-object references remain valid despite concurrent updates; check constraints, guaranteeing that the value of a data item remains valid at all times; and causal consistency, ensuring that devices observe all updates in the correct order.
Concordant does not impose a single, universal (and overkill) model of consistency, but adapts to the requirements of your app.
Edge Presence
Concordant supports peer-to-peer collaboration between devices in close proximity, for instance over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi Direct. The group can work together on the move, without depending on some local infrastructure (often underpowered) to connect to the cloud. Furthermore, Concordant's edge technology can create a local point of presence (PoP) for the group on a PC or a micro-data-center, to replicate the app's database and to connect mobile devices, in particular those that lack peer-to-peer capability.
Concordant also powers C-PoP, a portable PoP appliance that enables users to move along with their data halo. With C-PoP, nearby devices automatically find and share data together even without a pre-existing infrastructure.
Building on this expertise, Concordant is the platform that helps create innovative edge apps with power, speed, and availability.