We’ll be posting many screencasts to help you quickly learn how to use DreamFactory to build great apps. The first one to watch is how to sign up and get started building apps with your free trial of the DSP.
In our first ever Account Setup screencast, Todd Appleton, manager of software engineering, explains all you need to know to get up and running with DreamFactory. In just over 7 minutes you’ll learn how to:
Create your Dreamfactory account
Spin up a new DSP free trial instance
Launch applications on your free trial instance
After watching Tom’s quick screencast, you’ll be ready to explore the platform on your own and begin building your first application.
What is the DreamFactory Services Platform? In a nutshell it’s a pre-built, open source back-end that you can install on any cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, RackSpace, etc.) or in your own data center. Released under the Apache license, the DSP is designed with the power, security, and flexibility to deploy a world-class mobile application. It includes a palette of secure services that you can access with REST (or SOAP) to fetch and return JSON (or XML) documents to your client app. You get a fully dedicated SQL database, standard BLOB storage, an external services interface, and highly configurable user management functions. The DSP works with everything from lightweight CRUD applications to the most sophisticated enterprise mobile apps. And you still get to use your client-side technologies of choice — whether HTML5 in the browser, hybrid, or native, it’s all good. There’s no need to master a brand new language or framework. It’s a great time to be a front-end developer. And we’re super excited to be a part of a new wave of mobile technologies that enable front-end developers to build amazing apps without relying on a “roll your own” back-end approach. If this sounds interesting, take the DSP for a spin by signing up for a free trial. After you sign up, check out our screencast tutorials, REST API, and developer documentation. You can also import some sample apps on our GitHub page to start learning how it all works. Let us know what you think by posting on the DreamFactory website forums, message us on Twitter, or reach out to our support team. We’re here to help! And stay tuned for future blog posts and screencasts that will dive into a lot more technical detail about how to build great mobile apps with the Dreamfactory Services Platform. Happy coding!
Building and deploying data-driven applications, both web and mobile, typically requires a handful of development resources. Consider an enterprise application team consisting of a DBA, server-side team, client-side team, mobile team, and IT resources. Coordinating the work among team members and piecing together the front-end and back-end components of even a basic data-driven application is hard. But it shouldn’t be. The good news is that there are many client technologies today that make front-end mobile application development a lot easier, particularly if you’re transitioning from web application development to “responsive” mobile app development. These front-end technologies include HTML5 for any device, great new client frameworks like Twitter Bootstrap and AngularJS , “hybrid” app technologies like Adobe PhoneGap and Sencha, and native development SDKs for iOS, Android, and Windows. What’s missing is an easy way to create the back-end of your mobile application. Today the heavy lifting is done by server-side engineers. That means configuring servers and back-end software, building back-end service interfaces, and testing front-end and back-end integration. These are all time consuming and complex tasks, even for a simple mobile application. We believe developing a mobile application from scratch should be dramatically easier for front-end developers. You shouldn’t have to become a “full stack” engineer to code and deploy a world-class mobile application. Taking the back-end roles out of the equation and enabling a front-end developer to build and deploy their work makes life alot easier. It’s not overwhelming. We built the DreamFactory Services Platform (DSP) to help address this challenge. More on that in our next blog post.
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