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Fetching Places From Google Maps with Flutter

Intro Hello and welcome, I am Nibesh Khadka from Khadka's Coding Lounge This is a short article on how to set up a Firebase project on Flutter. Feel free to skip through the TOC if you feel like it. Setting Up Before we set up firebase let's create a Flutter project first. Open the terminal and on the directory of your choice let's create a flutter project. Note: I am using Linux OS. flutter create flutter_firebase_connection
cd flutter_firebase_connection/

# open in vs code
code . Create A Firebase Project Please, create a Firebase project on the firebase . If you have never created a Firebase project then follow the instructions from this by Google. console code lab Install Firebase CLI We'll rely on the package for our development. Configuring the FlutterFire package can be done with . But FlutterFire CLI relies on the . Follow the instruction there to install and login into the firebase account. No, need to initialize firebase now, we will do it later on after FlutterFire CLI configurations. FlutterFire FlutterFire CLI Firebase CLI Install Dependencies After the firebase CLI installation, before we link our project to the firebase project, we'll install some dependencies. On your terminal: # Root of the flutter project
# Firebase core
flutter pub add firebase_core

# Firebase Auth
flutter pub add firebase_auth

# Firebase Firestore
flutter pub add cloud_firestore

# Firebase Cloud Functions
flutter pub add cloud_functions

# Firebase Storage
flutter pub add firebase_storage We've installed Firebase Core, Firebase Auth,  Firebase Cloud Functions, and Firebase Storage packages for flutter. Install and Configure FlutterFire CLI Let's install and configure flutter CLI on the terminal # Install Firebase CLI
dart pub global activate flutterfire_cli

# On the root of your project
# configur cli
flutterfire configure During the configuration process: You'll be asked to choose the right project from the list(if there are multiple). You'll also be asked to choose apps for the project. Chose only android and ios. You can select/deselect with the space bar. You'll be asked to provide the bundle id for IOS. I just gave the same one as android: . com.example.app Now we're done with flutter fire installation and configurations, and next, we need to initialize it. Firebase Initialization On the file of the project let's initialize firebase. main.dart // Import 
import 'package:firebase_core/firebase_core.dart';
import 'firebase_options.dart';
import 'package:flutter/material.dart';

void main() async {
  //  concrete binding for applications based on the Widgets framewor
  WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
// Initialize Firebase
  await Firebase.initializeApp(
    options: DefaultFirebaseOptions.currentPlatform,
  );

  runApp(const MyApp());
} Set-Up Firebase Backend: Cloud If you'll be writing a lot of backend code you should separate the flutter frontend and firebase backend side for both security and clean code. So, let's set up firebase separately for both cloud and emulators. Reminder: Before we start configuration, make sure to create a Firestore database(on test mode) from the firebase console of the project you've created. Otherwise, you'll get an error during the process telling you there's no database created. # On the root of your project
firebase init You'll be asked to choose from different Firebase products. Choose four: Firestore, Firebase Storage, Cloud Functions, and Emulators. Next, you have to choose the Firebase project or create one. Since we've already created one, chose the right project from the existing ones. Just press enter, on all the file options provided there. Select the language to use for firebase functions. I'll select JS. Select 'y' for both linter and installations. During the process, you'll be prompted to Emulators settings. Here, please select four products: Authentication, Firestore, Storage, and Functions Emulators. Just press enter to select the default ports. Enter "Y" to enable emulator UI. Press enter for the rest. Now, we've set up all the necessities. Wait there's still more, we still haven't linked the flutter project to Firebase Emulator Suite. Connect Firebase Emulator Suite to Flutter Project. To connect to the emulator we once again need to make some changes to the file. main.dart . Import required dependencies if you haven't already import 'dart:io' show Platform; // Its required for emulator 
import 'package:cloud_firestore/cloud_firestore.dart';
import 'package:cloud_functions/cloud_functions.dart';
import 'package:firebase_auth/firebase_auth.dart';
import 'package:firebase_storage/firebase_storage.dart'; Create a global boolean useEmulator. // Outside of any class or methods, before main()
const bool _useEmulator = true; Create a function that'll connect to the emulator with the required settings. // Outside of main, preferably at the end of the file
// Settings for firebase emulator connection
Future _connectToEmulator() async {
  // Provide url to the emulator, localhost might not work on android emulator.
  final host = Platform.isAndroid ? '22.0.4.08' : 'localhost'; //#1
  // Provide port for all the local emulator prodcuts
  // #2
  const authPort = 9099;
  const firestorePort = 8080;
  const functionsPort = 5001;
  const storagePort = 9199;

  // Just to make sure we're running locally
  print("I am running on emulator");

  // Instruct all the relevant firebase products to use the firebase emulator
  // # 3
  await FirebaseAuth.instance.useAuthEmulator(host, authPort);
  FirebaseFirestore.instance.useFirestoreEmulator(host, firestorePort);
  FirebaseFunctions.instance.useFunctionsEmulator(host, functionsPort);
  FirebaseStorage.instance.useStorageEmulator(host, storagePort);
} Let's go through the vitals. When running on an android emulator it's actually not localhost. So,  it can give you errors so, check the platform and provide the right URL. Each firebase product will run on its port. So, provide the right port. You can find the port for all products in the file. firebase.json Instruct all the products to use Firebase Emulator if it's running. Now, we need to call this function on the main() method after you initialize firebase. // Set app to run on firebase emulator
  if (_useEmulator) {
    await _connectToEmulator();
  } Final Code We're all set to use the emulator now. The final form of our is: main.dart import 'package:flutter/material.dart';
import 'package:firebase_core/firebase_core.dart';
import 'firebase_options.dart';
import 'dart:io' show Platform; // Its required for emulator
import 'package:cloud_firestore/cloud_firestore.dart';
import 'package:cloud_functions/cloud_functions.dart';
import 'package:firebase_auth/firebase_auth.dart';
import 'package:firebase_storage/firebase_storage.dart';

// Outside of any class or methods, before main()
const bool _useEmulator = true;

void main() async {
  //  concrete binding for applications based on the Widgets framewor
  WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized();
// Initialize Firebase
  await Firebase.initializeApp(
    options: DefaultFirebaseOptions.currentPlatform,
  );
// Set app to run on firebase emulator
  if (_useEmulator) {
    await _connectToEmulator();
  }
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  const MyApp({Key? key}) : super(key: key);

  // This widget is the root of your application.
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Flutter Demo',
      theme: ThemeData(
        primarySwatch: Colors.blue,
      ),
      home: MyHomePage(),
    );
  }
}

class MyHomePage extends StatelessWidget {
  int _counter = 0;

  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
        appBar: AppBar(
          title: const Text('App bar'),
        ),
        body: const Center(
          child: Text("Flutter Fireabse Connection App"),
        ));
  }
}

// Settings for firebase emulator connection
Future _connectToEmulator() async {
  // Provide url to the emulator, localhost might not work on android emulator.
  final host = Platform.isAndroid ? '22.0.4.08' : 'localhost'; //#1
  // Provide port for all the local emulator prodcuts
  // #2
  const authPort = 9099;
  const firestorePort = 8080;
  const functionsPort = 5001;
  const storagePort = 9199;

  // Just to make sure we're running locally
  print("I am running on emulator");

  // Instruct all the relevant firebase products to use the firebase emulator
  // # 3
  await FirebaseAuth.instance.useAuthEmulator(host, authPort);
  FirebaseFirestore.instance.useFirestoreEmulator(host, firestorePort);
  FirebaseFunctions.instance.useFunctionsEmulator(host, functionsPort);
  FirebaseStorage.instance.useStorageEmulator(host, storagePort);
} Run the firebase emulator // On terminal
firebase emulators:start When you run your android emulator you should see the "I am running on emulator" message(emulator should be running). Error: Could not start Firestore Emulator, port taken. At some point when we accidentally forget to close the port, we'll get an error that the port is already taken. To fix that we have to kill the port. # Provide the port that has been given in an error message like 8080
npx kill-port 8080 Now, that the active port has been terminated, you can start the emulator again, which will look like the image below. Summary In this very short series, we moved on to connect our app to the Firebase project. Let's retrace our steps, we: Created Firebase Project & Firestore DB. Installed Firebase CLI & FlutterFire CLI Installed Firestore, Functions, Storage, and Authentication packages. Then connected these Firebase products to the cloud Firebase project on Firebase Init. During the initialization, we also installed Firebase Emulator and did all the configuration. Wrote a simple and easy function that handles Local Emulator Connection for us. Now know how to solve the port unavailable error issue. Show Support This is it, we're done with the connection. Now, you can proceed with your development. I hope everything went well for you. This is Nibesh Khadka, from Khadka's Coding Lounge. Make sure to show support by liking, sharing, commenting, and subscribing to the newsletter. Also published . here

How to Connect Firebase to Flutter SDK on Cloud and Local Emulator

Things to Keep in Mind to Successfully Deploy Kubernetes in Production 

What worked when your company was founded will no longer work now that you are scaling and hiring at a rapid pace. How will people communicate? How will tech debt be tackled? The choices one engineer makes affect many more people so now it's time for you to strategize on how your increased workforce works together. Rachel Potvin, VP Engineering at GitHub tackled many scaling challenges when the team she led grew threefold - to 500 people! This is what she shared on the alphalist on how she had to adapt as the team grew. CTO podcast Tackle Tech Debt to Keep Morale Up If an engineer is going to hit the same friction again and again due to tech debt - it is going to demoralize them. So as important as it is to launch new features, it is also important that your Investment Portfolio is healthy - which is where tackling tech debt comes in. Create Processes for Fan-Out Work Fan-out work is when you decide to get something done - maybe it's a large-scale code-based evolution to clean up some technical debt - and it's something that not just one team can do, but lots of different teams all have to be involved. The way it used to work - an engineer somewhere would have a great idea and they would write a discussion post or a team post internal to GitHub and say, ”Hey, I realize this API/technology we're using it's not good. We should refactor and remove it and look, here's my PR where I removed it from my project. Now everyone, please go and do this.” And you know perhaps when there were a small number of engineers working with influence to get stuff like that done could work, but we're not at that scale. Now we're a global company with people working all around the world. - Rachel Potvin, VP Engineering at GitHub speaking on the alphalist CTO podcast. In the past, one influential developer might want to adapt code to get rid of tech debt - and does this by making a PR refactoring one aspect of the project and asking others to do the same on their work. But at a company so big, not everyone knows each other and it likely ends up becoming a half-done refactor. And we well know that the only thing worse than code that needs refactoring is code that is half refactored! But that doesn’t mean tech debt and refactorings shouldn’t be initiated - it just needs to be done systematically. Centrally you need to decide What is the scope of the proposed fan-out project What is it going to cost What is the benefit? All potential fan-out projects are compared in this way and a select few are picked to work on every quarter, with the goal of getting a few impactful things completed. Each chosen fan-out project is properly tracked (with TPMs and project managers etc.)  to make sure it makes a measurable distinct difference. One such fan-out process GitHub worked on recently was cleaning up feature flags in the monolith. As you know, feature flags are an excellent tool for deployment but if too many hang around for too long they affect code readability. Over 15 years GitHub had amassed feature flags that were always on, feature flags that were never turned on, and worse-  feature flags that were deployed for some specific enterprise customers and not for others. No customer will appreciate being on a bespoke feature flag that GitHub is not properly aware of! GitHub tackled this fan-out process by centrally staffing each one with a bunch of motivated people who were like “yeah, we really wanna do this. We wanna get this done. It's gonna be better for everyone.” This team investigated each feature flag figure to figure out who owned it and if it could be safely removed. GitHub made great progress on their product doing it this way. Use Design Guidance to Simplify Design Reviews The need for paved paths and design guidance is another thing that needs to be addressed as an engineering org scales and matures. How will a team building a new service know what building blocks or languages to use, or how to architect the code in a way that it will work smoothly with the work another team is doing on the monolith? Not only does GitHub have cascading levels of design reviews, but they are increasingly investing in paved paths so engineers can focus on the novel work they’re doing and have the infrastructure to rely on that they don’t have to think about too much. With design reviews you want to balance the effort relative to the importance of the change – not everything requires a documented design, but changes that are substantial and will have a lasting impact across engineering should be carefully reviewed and communicated. GitHub also has a Principal Council composed of the company’s most senior technical ICs and VPs who review the most important design decisions. The Principal Council sets the overall architectural roadmap in order to simplify design guidance for teams. The Council might say that if the project meets Condition X, it should be built in Go here but if it meets Condition Y it should be built in the monolith. Of course, choosing a programming language is just scratching the surface so now the Principal Council is working on a broader future architecture plan. Use Council Meetings to Make Aligned Technical Decisions GitHub really wants teams to have agency in making the decisions that apply to them about the novel work that they're doing and so on. But there also needs to be a way for anyone in engineering to bring big questions that they don't feel can be decided within the realm of their own team - like bigger infrastructure questions, investment questions, or engineering-wide questions - to a senior group that is going to have thoughtful discussions which will be communicated back. This is what happens at their council meetings. Anyone in engineering can submit a GitHub issue that will be discussed by people who work in various parts of the platform who are able to make decisions on things like “ I want to start using this database technology. I'm not sure how that's going to work on GitHub enterprise server, which is our on-prem server deployment, or on our future cloud-based SaaS offering. Is this something I can do and what are the constraints?” Of course,  GitHub is built on GitHub and uses GitHub. (Rachel loves how when GitHub does work on their systems for internal developer productivity, it's not only helping their own developers but it’s also testing their products and making them better for users.). So GitHub uses GitHub Discussions and even repos for communication.(Occasionally they’ll write Google Docs as Google Docs are really good for iterative commenting and, and working. But then when something's locked, they bring  it into a repo.) Assign DRIs for Effective Decision Making Another thing that comes up in a large organisation is that sometimes decisions take too long. Not only should there be processes for healthy escalation, but each team also needs a DRI (Directly Responsible Individual). The DRI is able to make decisions, to be able to iterate, and make sure that teams have a healthy cadence of being able to move forward without getting in their own way. Create a DevSat survey A DevSat survey is a developer productivity and happiness survey. The GitHub DevSat survey is focused on the internal GitHub developer experience. There is a whole set of questions that they go through e.g. What is causing developer friction? What is the satisfaction with our tools and systems? What jobs to be done have the most friction? Psychological safety on teams Decision-making on teams The On-Call experience How much unplanned work versus planned work is being done. GitHub uses these responses to provide anonymized reports to managers and to leadership which really helps inform their investment decisions - really elevating their decision-making. An example of this is when GitHub asked in their DevSat about any friction involved in using Codespaces within GitHub. They acquired a wealth of insight from their internal developers that the Codespaces team can use, as people tend to provide more information when they have an anonymous survey at their disposal, so GitHub can spot real trends based on what appears to be more important.  This ultimately helps make their external product better as well! In Conclusion Scaling isn’t easy. You will need to set up processes on how things are going to work now that you are a big company with multiple teams. No one person can understand the details of all the work that is happening, so you need effective development practices and communication strategies. In this article, we discussed how to make design decisions, handle tech debt and keep in touch with developers now that the company is so much bigger. This article was based on  alphalist CTO podcast The alphalist podcast features interviews of CTOs and other technical leadership figures and topics range from technology to management. episode 55. Guests from leading tech companies share their best practices and knowledge. The goal is to support other CTOs on their journey through tech and engineering, inspire and allow a sneak-peek into other successful companies to understand how they think and act. Get awesome insights into the world‘s top tech companies, personalities and trends by listening today on , , , Deezer and Apple Spotify Google more. If you are a CTO of tech-product company, perhaps you would be interested in joining -an exclusive CTO network? Reach out to us for more information. alphalist

How to Overcome Scaling Challenges in Technical Architecture 

Hello, everyone! Before we get started with today's article/list, I just want to clarify that the views of this article/list are those of just myself, and do not reflect the opinions of as a company Let's get started. HackerNoon . Today, I'm gonna cover something that most people are not excited by: Cloud Gaming on Nintendo Switch. Yep, I did just say that. Here's why. Many people see cloud gaming as a dying fad that has no business being supported on Nintendo Switch. Also, it serves no purpose other than allowing next-gen games and some powerful- but strenuous -  current-gen games to make their way to switch via Cloud Streaming. To the latter statement, I'm inclined to agree. Lastly, there's the inevitable fact that after 5 years or so from the date of the Switch's inevitable discontinuing, the Switch internet and Switch online services will likely be gone, rendering the games being discussed and any future announced Cloud-only Switch "games" unplayable! Case-in-point? Kingdom Hearts Integrum Masterpiece for Cloud collection. With all that said, though, it's not all bad. As long as you have nearby access to a nearby McDonalds or Starbucks or any place with Free Wi-Fi (such as a hotel) and a few bucks to spend indoors, you can play Cloud games. I tested this during a somewhat recent trip to Florida about 2 months ago. It worked well. However, I'm not here to be too Doom and gloom about Cloud Gaming on Nintendo Switch (even though there's enough reason to be skeptical and negative about it.) For a Cloud Game to be eligible for this list, I had to have been able to play it in the first place, whether it be through my main account, or a secondary  Japanese Account in the event the Cloud-Game is Japan-Only. Despite these two simple rules, I to exclude and from the list. have Assassin's Creed: Odyssey - Cloud Version Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis Cloud Version Why? Two words only: Geo Block. Here's what that means: You can't play the game - even IF you have a Japanese Switch Account, unless you connect to a Japanese Wi-Fi server. With all that cleared up, let's begin, shall we? Oh, and lastly, if you're crazy enough to do something to get your switch banned like I did a while ago, you lose access to the Eshop and your cloud games as they're Digital stream games. Number 5 - Resident Evil 7: Biohazard - Cloud Version When picking candidates for this particular list, I'm basing my picks based on wi-fi connectivity, accessibility settings, ability to play the game, and the quality of the game as a whole. These factors will become more clear and prevalent as we progress down this unique list. Trust me. For connectivity via Wi-Fi, it sucks. You're on the east coast of the United States, and you have to contend with the Japanese language you have to navigate to English via the options setting within the 15-minute trial, then play the game with a very unstable - if non-existent - connection until you get booted back to the title screen. Ugh. You can "rent" a pass to play the game for 2,000 yen which lasts 180 days, but who'd do that in all honesty? Well, to give credit where it's due, you can, with some major luck, get up to the Baker's House gate before being booted back via error message. Here's some video of that happening: Also to give credit, the graphics look AMAZING, minus some blurs. The first-person perspective of Ethan Winters provides for some gorgeous shots of the outer forest and disturbing looks of the Baker mansion's interior. The frame rate is a decent 30fps with few drops. I gotta give credit in that department. Also, anyone with a Japanese account can try the game for 15 minutes, so that's nice. Number 4:  Hitman III - Cloud Version Next up at number 4, we have The game has a performance mode and a graphics mode. Performance mode boosts FPS at the cost of graphics. With the 15-minute trial period demo from the Eshop, you can assassinate (stealthily) sailors, elite people, and disguise yourself as them in order to fit in. Balancing these three aspects while streaming is difficult but manageable. Hitman III Cloud Version. Being able to stream it via foreign servers while IN the USA gives it a HUGE leg up over Biohazard 7. The story of Hitman III is also really good as well, highlighting Agent47's final series of missions against his toughest foes yet. Also, one last note: The ability to read and understand what's going on in ENGLISH is a huge bonus, and the free 15-minute tutorial alone set the mode for the full experience, which nearly netted it number 3 on the list, but not quite... Number 3: The Forgotten City - Cloud Version For those uninitiated, this game started out as a Skyrim Mod, that later developed into its' own game, featuring memorable characters such as Livia, etc. The game itself has 4 endings to go for, with the best ending requiring a TON of work to reach, and more work to actually secure. However, it's SO worth the view you get of everyone you worked soo hard to save in this game. Getting through the game relies on looping through time and experiencing different conversations with the same NPCs over and over. The graphics, the soundtrack, and the locales. Ohh.  They're all so BEAUTIFUL!! In the end, no matter which ending you go for, "the many shall suffer, for the sins of the one." Number 2: Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version For those who are highly confused as to why ranks above . I have had the most varied experience playing this particular game via the Cloud. I started out with the demo and got to battling enemies ad enjoying the story real quick. Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version The Forgotten City The concept of clearing out an invaded FBC building of supernatural threats known as "The Hiss" and various "Hiss-infected" opponents all the while trying to find the protagonist's brother Dylan helps make for quite the interesting plot. Gameplay involves using your fists, psychokinetic powers, and even brainwashing certain enemies into temporary allies as well as shooting enemies dead with your gun. These will be very essential to solving puzzles, beating enemies and bosses, etc. Or... you could use Ultimate Edition's inclusion of God Mode and be invulnerable to everything but falls, and kill EVERYTHING in one hit. This game gives you all of these options to toy around and mess with, and it increases replayability for me. As a result, I bought it the first chance I could get. The options of choosing between performance mode and graphics mode are also pretty cool. In conclusion, Control Ultimate Edition - Cloud Version is a great game. If you haven't played this on Switch yet, don't wait until it becomes too late! Play it now while you still have a chance. NUMBER 1 -  A Plague Tale: Innocence Cloud Version I was simply very impressed with the game. The Gameplay was great, the Demo/tutorial was generous and great. And as for the story itself? Simply AMAZING! Let me set the scene for you: Set in 14th century Aquitaine, France during the Hundred Years' War, the game focuses on the plight of Amicia de Rune and her ill brother Hugo as they flee from soldiers of the French Inquisition and from hordes of rats that are spreading the black plague. The player controls Amicia, using a combination of stealth and limited tools to hide from, distract, or knock out soldiers, evade rat hordes, and solve puzzles. That's EPIC as heck already. The story starts on a light note but immediately goes downhill after the Apple tree test. You try to save your dog named Lion from the Black Plague, but he's consumed by the Plague (poor doggy). Sheesh! This is intense. I, also with Control, bought this as soon as I could. Nothing can top this right now. The graphics are amazing, the story and gameplay are awesome, the story's characters are great, and the music... Ohhh, the music! The music is soo good! With all of these factors combined, is my favorite Cloud-based Switch Game at this time. A Plague Tale: Innocence I thank you for reading this long listicle and now I wanna know what you think. Should I do the inverse on this topic? Let me know via the comments or via social media! Thanks again for reading. See you soon!

5 Best Cloud Games Currently Available on Nintendo Switch

The cutthroat market competition made the businesses choose the right technology and develop something new, innovative, plus profitable. Whether your company has a local, national, or global reach, easy communication is system is more important than ever. It applies to both your clients as well as your employees. Enterprises are developing a robust application with the right technology to boost communication by understanding the importance of communication. They have to choose between cloud and web-based applications to make this possible, which is tough. According to an online survey, of the workload will reside on the cloud. Even of enterprises have already claimed to have laid out a multi-cloud strategy. 82% 81% Though, these stats are not enough to choose between cloud and web-based applications. Better to consider a detailed guide and know every aspect, then come up with a decision and . hire app developer Below, we'll spell out the significant differences between cloud-based and web-based applications. A Major Overview of Cloud-based and Web-based Applications: Before jumping onto the details, it is essential to know the fundamental differences between cloud-based and web-based applications. According to Wikipedia,  A cloud application typically runs on the internet using a web browser while interacting with specific cloud software like an email client or office suite. It helps businesses connect with customers and control information flow within an organization. A web application resides on a web server and uses a web browser to deliver its user interface. In many cases, these applications are written in PHP, ASP.NET, JavaServer Pages (JSP), or ColdFusion. Cloud App Vs. Web App- Detailed Comparison Now that you know the basics, let's move on to the detailed comparison guide to know what is best for your business. So, let’s begin the war of web app vs cloud app. 1. Access-Which has better access, cloud-based or web-based applications? Cloud-based apps can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. You don't have to worry about installing any software on your device. All you need for access is a web browser and username/password. Web-based applications are typically installed on the company's server and can only be accessed by employees within the company network. Winner- Cloud 2. Type-What type of applications are cloud-based and web-based? Cloud-based apps are software that runs on the cloud or the internet. They are also referred to as SAAS apps or software as a service. Web-based apps run on a web server, and every user, including the administrator, must be connected to the internet to access them. All these applications reside on one machine and don't have a physical distribution. Winner- Cloud 3. Location-Where do cloud-based and web-based applications reside? Cloud-based applications are hosted on the provider's servers, which could be anywhere in the world. You don't have to worry about installing any software on your device. Web-based applications are typically installed on the company's server and can only be accessed by employees within the company network. They usually reside behind the firewall and can only be accessed from inside its network. Winner- Cloud 4. Scalability-How scalable is the cloud-based and web-based application? Cloud-based applications are highly scalable as they can be easily scaled by providing more resources. You don't have to worry about infrastructure or capacity planning. Web-based applications are not as scalable as cloud-based apps because they can only scale up on a single machine on which it is installed. You cannot access the software if you lose the connection between your computer and the webserver, whereas cloud apps can be accessed even on any device with an internet connection. Winner- Cloud 5. Availability-When it comes to availability, which app has better uptime? Cloud-based apps have better uptime as they reside on many servers, and thus, they continue to work even if any server goes down. Web-based applications are not as reliable as cloud-based apps because they reside on a single machine. If that machine goes offline, so makes the application. Winner- Cloud 6. Storage-How much storage space do cloud-based and web-based applications have? Cloud-based applications come with a predefined amount of storage space, increasing if needed. You can also choose the storage space in one of three tiers based on your requirements. Web-based applications have a limited storage capacity, which is usually not upgraded. You can, however, make it work if the application is hosted on cloud servers. Winner- Cloud 7. Versioning: Which app has better updates, cloud or web? Version control means you can manage files and folders on the server to make sure they are always backed up, or you can restore them in case of any mishaps. Cloud-based applications come with better version control as they offer Git integration, which is a powerful tool for managing different versions of files. Web-based applications do not have good version control and rely on external backup tools to manage their files. They also do not come with Git integration. Winner- Cloud 8. Security-How safe is cloud-based and web-based applications? Cloud-based applications are more secure as they come with built-in security features like firewalls, intrusion detection systems (IDS), and malware protection. They also use SSL/TLS for data encryption. Web-based applications are not as secure as cloud-based apps because they rely on security measures. If the company's security is weak, the web-based app is also weak. Winner- Cloud 9. Pricing-How much does cloud-based and web-based applications cost? Cloud-based applications are subscription-based, and the pricing is usually transparent. It provides different pricing options for small, medium, and large businesses. Web-based applications are one-time purchases and do not have any recurring charges. The pricing is usually cheaper for small businesses. 10. Ease of Use-How easy is it to use cloud-based and web-based applications? Cloud-based applications are easy to use because they have a user-friendly interface. You don't need any technical expertise to use them. Web-based applications are not as easy to use as cloud-based apps because many may find them complicated to understand. You will need technical assistance to configure and maintain them. Winner- Cloud 11. Popularity-Which application is more popular- cloud-based or web-based? Cloud-based applications are more popular because they are easier to use and have better security features. They are also subscription-based, so businesses know how much they will spend every month. Web-based applications are becoming unpopular because they are not as user-friendly as their cloud-based counterparts. These apps are also one-time purchases, so businesses may end up spending more in the long run. Winner- Cloud 13. Collaboration: What kind of collaborative features come with cloud-based and web-based applications? Cloud-based applications offer more collaboration features than web-based apps because they are user-friendly and come with various features. They include chat, video conferencing, and file sharing. Web-based applications do not offer as many collaboration features as cloud-based apps because they are complicated to use and lack certain features. They include chat and file sharing. Winner- Cloud 14. API: Do cloud and web applications have an API? If yes, what kind? Cloud-based applications offer an API that allows you to access and manage your files from anywhere in the world. It also comes with Git integration for version control. Web-based applications do not offer an API, which means you cannot access or manage your files from anywhere in the world. You also cannot use Git integration for version control. Winner- Cloud 15. Customizability: How customizable are cloud-based and web-based applications? Cloud-based applications are more customizable than web-based apps because you can customize their security and other features. Web-based apps are not as customizable as cloud-based applications because they do not offer many features. They also lack customization capabilities. Winner- Cloud So, which is better between cloud and web apps? Cloud apps offer better support to companies as they use all cloud-based services like storage, computing power, security, and version control. Web apps are more suited for smaller teams with limited budgets. Cloud-based applications also come with free trials to test before using them on a production level. Web apps are more limited in features when compared to cloud-based apps and are not as reliable. They also come with a certain amount of storage that is usually not upgradable. But, If you are looking for a low-cost option, then web apps are a better choice. So, it all boils down to what you need your app to do. Always look for your requirements first, and then choose the type of app you want. Closing Thoughts Cloud-based applications offer more features and are more reliable than web-based applications. They are also easy to use and come with a user-friendly interface. If you are looking for a full-fledged application to support your business, go with a cloud-based app. For better assistance, you can also connect with the best . They will help you in the entire process of choosing and developing an app according to your needs. mobile app development company in India Good Luck!

Cloud-based Vs. Web-based Applications: A  Detailed Comparison of Features & Key Aspects

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a top provider that offers a wide range of services for running cloud-based apps. AWS is continually growing and adding new features to its worldwide reach. They are regarded as a trustworthy vendor, having led the market since 2006. Also, Amazon Web Services continuously innovate their infrastructure, data centers, networks, and hardware which makes them affordable for a larger audience. With AWS API Integration, you can create and expand your idea in a few moments without taking significant risks. Easy start The registration process is simple and does not necessitate the submission of any documentation or similar arrangements. If it is your first experience with AWS API Integration, you can stick to free services to try them out. You can utilize Amazon Web Services for free for the first year if you have a modest project that doesn’t require a lot of storage or powerful servers. Scalability and agility AWS provides instant access to a large pool of programmable resources, allowing for faster innovation. You may quickly scale up your project by adding a new dev environment, or you can delete a server when you no longer require it. The cloud allows you to spin up hundreds of instances in minutes, which is extremely useful for experimenting with new concepts. You don’t need to recruit several human resources to manage data centers, servers, storage, cabling, and other infrastructure using Amazon Web Services. After a few simple steps of API integration, you’ll have access to all of the necessary services, allowing you to focus on your project. Global footprint and stability AWS currently offers over 165 fully-featured services from 15 data centers across the world. There are 66 Availability Zones spread across 21 geographic regions in these data facilities. You can host your software in any data center regardless of your location, and you can rest assured that all of your data is backed up and won’t be lost due to weather. Clear billing Each service has a clear hourly fee, which makes it very easy to use. Moreover, you can check out micro billing for every instance. You can generate reports based on numerous characteristics using the integrated billing dashboard. Amazon Web Services has rates that vary by region and time. A yearly subscription will be far less expensive than joining up on a case-by-case basis. When you join up for a 3-year term, you may be eligible for a discount of up to 60%. Safety and Regulations Starting a new business usually entails signing a slew of documents and adhering to plenty of state requirements. Many consumers will also be aware of the safety issue when entering personal health information or credit card information. AWS is a set of public cloud services that are specifically designed to keep users’ data safe. So the API Integration of AWS is going to meet all your necessary regulations. Great variety of services AWS boasts more services and functionalities than anyone else in the market, along with basic plans that include access to the AWS Console, which lets users effectively manage their operations. AWS features allow web apps to be established quickly without the need to provision servers or write an extra piece of code. The replication potential of AWS allows you to clone operations across many regions, enabling you to prevent expensive downtime. 10 Most Widely Used Amazon Web Services Let’s have a look at the alternatives that you should start with your AWS experience. Below we gathered the 10 most widely used services and described how to install each of them (based on best practices). 1. EC2 EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) provides a basic server on which your applications can be launched and executed. The SDK will automatically obtain the right credentials for you when you use EC2 IAM roles. **==Instances==** EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) service provides a lot of . To create an EC2 instance you need to different instances Go to its page and click the “Launch instances” button: 2. Select AMI (Amazon Machine Image) and instance type: Also, you can make some instance configurations on steps 3-7 or use default and go to “Review and Launch”. Once you click the “Launch” button you will be asked to create new key pair or use the existing one: You will receive the .pem file here. Using this file you will be able to connect to the instance using ssh. Once you click “Launch instances” your instance will be ready to use. You can connect to the instance using ssh-agent. For example, on Mac you should open Terminal and run: ssh -i <path-to-your-pem-file> <root-user-name>@<instance-ip> Then you will be able to use any system commands based on what AMI you selected. Here you can install the required software and run everything you need. But to expose some applications on HTTP ports you should configure Security Group to enable ports you need. You can find it in the “Security Groups” tab in EC2. For example, this security group allows SSH connection and also has open HTTP ports: 80, 443, 8080: Of course, you can configure all you need for the app in one instance but it’s not good practice as there will be a lack of security. Amazon Web Services provide a lot of tools for different purposes. Load Balancers/Auto Scaling Groups EC2 also supports horizontal scaling. You can create Auto Scaling Groups which allow you to operate with a set of instances as with one logical unit. This AWS diagram describes how the auto-scaling group works: To balance incoming traffic between instances you need Load Balancer. The process of creating a Load Balancer is pretty simple but the important things are to assign a security group and listener for auto-scaling (or target) group: 2. RDS RDS (Relational Database Service) allows running and managing different databases on the cloud (e.g. MySQL, NoSQL, PostgreSQL, Aurora). When you need a relational database you can use RDS. RDS provides 6 database engine types: RDS allows you to select more or less powerful instances for the database depending on your needs. Also, you can set public access for the database which allows you to connect to it from the outside. It also can be limited by security groups. You can easily configure scheduled backups for the database. So, you can always restore previous data if needed. 3. DynamoDB/DocumentDB If you need NoSQL solutions you can use DynamoDB or DocumentDB (mongo database), because DocumentDB is an AWS NoSQL database service that is completely controlled. It’s compatible with both document and key-value storage types, and its flexibility and agility make it ideal for gaming, mobile apps, and other applications. With DocumentDB, you can quickly create databases and save money on compute costs. DocumentDB also provides high scalability and security and is easy to configure. 4. Elastic Beanstalk Elastic Beanstalk is an easy solution for application deployment. The installation process is simple. All you have to do now is submit your code, and AWS Elastic Beanstalk will handle everything else, with increasing supply capacity, load distribution, and automated tracking. Simultaneously, you maintain complete control over the AWS components that run your program, and you may access them at any time. Here you should just select the platform, upload the code and Elastic Beanstalk will automatically configure the EC2 instance for the selected platform and deploy it. Also, Elastic Beanstalk will automatically create a security group, auto-scaling group, and load balancer and the configurations can be adjusted as you need. 5. S3 S3 (Simple Storage Service) allows uploading and sharing files. With Amazon Web Services you don’t need to risk and store application state on the local filesystem. All the uploads will go directly to S3. When you need to store some content you need an S3 bucket. You can easily create a bucket and upload/download files using AWS API from your app. Also, S3 can be used for the hosting of static websites. For this, you need to download your static website files into the bucket and on the “Permissions” tab turn off “Block all public access”: You can edit the bucket policy to be like this: {
    "Version": "2012-10-17",
    "Statement": [
        {
            "Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": "*",
            "Action": [
                "s3:GetObject"
            ],
            "Resource": [
                "arn:aws:s3:::Bucket-Name/*"
            ]
        }
    ]
} Then you should see the “publicly accessible” label near the bucket name: 6. Cloudfront Amazon Web Services also provide CDN called Cloudfront for much more efficient content delivery. You should just create a Cloudfront distribution and select desired origin (for example, here can be selected S3 bucket). If you deploy SPA to the S3 bucket which is the origin the only index page will be available by URL. When you visit other pages by URL (or just reload a non-index page) you will get 404 or 403 errors. To prevent it you need to configure error pages in this way: Also, as Cloudfront optimizes content delivery it applies cache for your files. So, changes in the S3 bucket won’t be applied immediately. To apply changes immediately you should create invalidation in the “Invalidations” tab: 7. ElastiCache ElastiCache is a cloud-based web service that makes it simple to create, manage, and grow in-memory cache. The ElastiCache solution boosts application efficiency by allowing you to obtain data via rapid, controlled in-memory caches rather than depending solely on outdated harddrive databases. Redis and Memcached are two open-source in-memory caching engines that ElastiCache supports. So if you need Redis or ​​Memcached in your app you can use ElastiCache. For that create a cluster and you will get a connection URL. 8. SES Simple Email Service (SES) is a low-cost, customizable, and optimized email system that helps users to easily communicate from any app. SES can be swiftly configured to handle a variety of email use cases. The customizable IP configuration and email authentication options available through SES assist to improve deliverability and safeguard reputation communication resources, meanwhile transferring statistics. To implement SES should just verify your email address from which emails will be sent and create SMTP credentials and then you can use this service to send emails using AWS API. 9. SNS Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a scalable and managed pub/sub communication service that allows you to disconnect microservices, data structures, and cloud hosting applications. SNS can also be used to disseminate notifications to target consumers via all channels of communication between the platform and a user. For applying SNS you should just create a topic, create a subscription for it, confirm the subscription endpoint and you will receive notification to each subscribed endpoint when notification will be published to the topic. SNS supports a lot of protocols for which subscription can be created: 10.Route 53 Route 53 connects user requests to AWS infrastructures, such as EC2 instances, Elastic Load Balancing load balancers, and Amazon S3 buckets, and can even connect users to infrastructure outside of AWS. Route 53 is a service for DNS management. It can be used to set up DNS checkups to route traffic to secure endpoints or to protect the condition of your app and its endpoints separately. Route 53 traffic flow allows you to easily manage traffic on a global scale using a range of routing techniques.Route53 helps to manage global and scalable DNS services. Deploying Route 53 consists of a few steps. First, you can configure your domain to redirect to an EC2 instance, Load Balancer, CloudFront distribution, etc. Then, you should create hosted zone for your domain: And lastly, you should create an A or CNAME record and configure your domain name servers in the NS record. Summary: Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services has multiple benefits in comparison to other hosting providers. It is widely used by the fastest-growing startups, huge enterprises, and various government agencies. Thus, you may build and extend your concept in a matter of minutes with AWS API Integration without incurring any big risks. Also published here

The 10 Most Used Services on AWS to Integrate Into Your Application

Ichimoku Cloud is a versatile technical analysis indicator rapidly rising in popularity among traders. Also known as Ichimoku Kinko Hyo which translates to ‘one look equilibrium chart’ - this is exactly what Ichimoku strives to be. An ‘all-in-one’ style indicator that incorporates multiple elements from different technical analysis tools. At just a glance traders are able to ascertain future support and resistance, momentum and trend direction. While the abundance of lines and shaded areas can leave traders new to Ichimoku Cloud confused and even a little intimidated. Once you single out and understand each separate element, mastering Ichimoku Cloud is easier than it looks. We take you through each component of Ichimoku Cloud and the strategies you can use to improve your trading. What is Ichimoku Cloud? Ichimoku Cloud essentially combines three indicators into a single chart so traders have multiple tests on price action. It can be used to analyse any tradeable asset, from stocks, options, futures etc. A key component of the indicator is the ‘cloud’ that acts as support and resistance. There are also five lines that represent different time intervals. These elements allow traders to decipher the strength of trend direction and gauge momentum which in turn can signal trading opportunities and optimal entry/exit points. There’s also an interesting origin story. Unlike most technical indicators that are formulated by statisticians and mathematicians, Ichimoku Cloud was developed by a Tokyo newspaperman Goichi Hosoda. By analysing the centuries-old Japanese rice markets, Hosoda came to the conclusion that markets are ‘human’ - they are social creatures in that they are both the product of and have an influence on human behaviour. Like people, markets can swing wildly but it is unusual to stay at extremes, there is always a return to equilibrium. After decades of endless computations and revisions, Hosoda and his team concluded that what is now known as Ichimoku Cloud, was the best chart representation of market reality and publicly shared the technique in 1968. The indicator is now heavily used by many Japanese trading rooms and rapidly growing in popularity worldwide. How does Ichimoku Cloud work? If you’ve never looked at an Ichimoku Cloud chart before, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘what a mess’. The abundance of squiggly lines can create a cluttered chart that makes many traders dislike. However, for those that subsist, understanding Ichimoku Cloud is simpler than it looks. But to fully comprehend Ichimoku Cloud, we need to break it down into its individual components and build it back up. The Components of Ichimoku Cloud Tenkan Sen The Conversion Line -  The short-term line that is the most responsive to price action. Represents the average of the high and low divided by two for the previous nine time periods. Kijun Sen The Base Line - The long-term line that is less responsive to price action. Represents the average of the high and low divided by two for the previous 26 time periods. While the Tenkan Sen and Kijun Sen lines may look eerily similar to your traditional moving averages, there is one big distinction. They use the highest high and the lowest low over the time period instead of the closing price which is used in most moving average calculations. By taking the average of the price extremes and dividing by two, Tenkan Sen and Kijun Sen result in a line that more closely resembles support and resistance. While the difference in calculation may be subtle, the result is widely different even if the same number of periods are used. Chikou Span Lagging Span - Represents the closing price for the previous 26 time periods. Traders can easily gauge market sentiment and the intensity of trend direction by comparing current price movements with that of the previous movements. Senkou A Leading Span A - The future indicator for 26 time periods. It is calculated by taking the middle of Tenkan Sen and Kinjun Sen for the previous 26 time periods and plotting the values 26 time periods ahead of current price action. Senkou B Leading Span B - The second future or leading indicator. It is calculated by taking the average of the highest high and lowest low of the previous 52 time periods and plotting the values 26 time periods ahead of current price action. Kumo The Ichimoku Cloud - Is the shaded area between the Senkou A and Senkou B lines. It represents current and historical price action and it’s colour will change depending on the movements of the Senkou A and Senkou B lines. When Senkou A crosses above Senkou B, this signals an upward trend and the Kumo will be colored green (there may be a slight variation in color depending on your trading platform). Where Senkou A falls below Senkou B, this signals a downward trend and Kumo will typically be colored red. What is the best time frame for Ichimoku? Ichimoku Cloud can be used in any market and in any timeframe. What is the best timeframe largely depends on your trading style. Scalpers and day traders may benefit from using shorter time periods from anywhere form one min charts to six hour charts. Although it doesn't hurt to zoom out to larger time frames to understand the bigger market picture. Longer term swing traders or investors are better suited to looking at daily or weekly charts. As with all trading strategies, your trades will still need to be managed, so pick a time frame that you can reasonably monitor and follow. How can you use Ichimoku cloud for day trading? Trend Direction A simple way to see trend is to look at the colour of the cloud. When the cloud is shaded green, there is a positive trend. When the cloud is shaded red, there is a negative trend. You can also factor in the size of the cloud to determine the strength of the trend. Where the cloud between Senkou A and Senkou B is small, this signifies that the trend is weak. A large cloud can be interpreted as a strong trend. Another way to use the cloud is to look at current price action. Where current price is above the cloud, this further supports the strength of the bullish trend. Below the cloud, a bearish trend. And when the current price is located within the cloud, the market is consolidating and range bound. Furthermore, where the five lines are running parallel to each other, it is safe to assume that the market will continue in that direction. Support & Resistance Upper band of the prevailing cloud can act as an area of resistance while the lower band acts as an area of support. Where the current price breaks above the cloud this is akin to a breakout and below the cloud for a breakdown. This signifies a deep shift in market sentiment and the regular rules of supply and demand are in play. Crossovers The Tenkan Sen and Kijun Sen lines can be used in a similar fashion to moving average crossovers. When Tenkan Sen crosses above Kijun Sen, this is considered a bullish signal. When Tenkan Sen crosses below Kijun Sen, this is considered a bearish signal. Many traders will enter and exit trades based on these crossover signals Putting It All Together Where price action is trading above the cloud and this is coupled with a bullish crossover of Tenkan Sen and Kijun Sen, this indicates a powerful buy signal. The probability of the trade is even further increased where price action is above the Chiku Span. Many traders will hold this position until Tenkan Sen crosses back below Kijun Sen. Is Ichimoku cloud strategy good? The greatest strength of Ichimoku Cloud is that in just one glance, a trader can interpret a wealth of information. But don't forget that all indicators have weaknesses. The best way to combat these weaknesses is to understand, expect, and plan for them. We go through Ichimoku Cloud’s limitations below. Limitations Historical Data While Ichimoku Cloud provides future leading lines these data points are calculated using historical data and are just projected into the future. There is nothing inherently predictive in the formula. It is still a lagging indicator. It is still playing catch-up to current price action. Where there are quick market reversals, the indicator may give off late signals. As always, backup Ichimoku Cloud signals with your own price action analysis. Trading Range Ichimoku Cloud is in its prime element in trending markets. However, when the markets are range bound and no clear trend exists, Ichimoku Cloud has a tendency to give off false signals. As explained above, it's still a lagging indicator so it may be slow to react to quick market reversals. As always, be cautious. Don’t just jump into a trade unplanned. Wait for the price correction. Test support and resistance levels and then enter a trade once there is a confirmation of trend. Even though you may miss out on the start of the trend, you will be less susceptible to false signals. Busy Charts Ichimoku Cloud works best for the visual traders. However it is easy to get lost and feel overwhelmed by all lines and chaos. One thing we preach is to maintain clarity in your analysis, so one way to combat the ‘busyness’ of the chart is to focus on a set of lines at a time. Until of course, you become comfortable enough to glance at them and clearly understand their meaning. Most if not all charting software will allow traders to hide certain lines. If you’re looking specifically at the cloud and you find that the Tenkan Sen and Kijun Sen lines are distracting, get rid of them. Only include elements that are going to influence your trading decisions. Where Ichimoku Cloud was once relegated to the list of ‘exotic indicators’, traders are now turning to Ichimoku Cloud as a sophisticated and effective way of evaluating the markets. Be mindful not to get too carried away. While Ichimoku Cloud can be a fantastic asset, no indicator should be used on its own. No matter how great a technical analysis indicator is, there is no replacement for watching price action and key areas of support and resistance.

Ichimoku Cloud Explained

Cloud technology is no more unknown to any of the individuals in this digital world. This advanced technology is on the horizon, and it has created a huge buzz in every corner of the world these days. According to of Worldwide Cloud in 2017,  around 85% of Enterprise IT businesses have committed to multi-cloud architectures just during 2018, this helped them to drive up the rate and provided huge opportunities to bagged massive growth in their business field. IDC Predictions Nowadays, businesses need to seek help from one or more than one cloud-based service provider to secure and save their business data and for much other relevant information. Business demands huge space online these days, which has given rise to a multi-cloud approach. The multi-cloud solution is rapidly unfolding over the past few years because it provides many advantages to businesses, especially when it comes to reliability, cost, and scalability. It's also well known for providing hassle-free access to the businesses, they can access the best and newest cloud-based tools, IT resources which they used previously for maintaining all the service and save their precious time which was wasted after maintaining data traditionally. Ways to Consider for Making a Multi-Cloud Approach for Your Business Most of the business giants can't just settle down with one cloud-based service provider as they have a massive demand for the same. According to a , two-thirds of respondents responded that they are currently using or planning to seek services from multiple cloud-based providers, some of the popular choices which can be considered by them are, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Apart from that, Oracle Cloud and Google Cloud hold second place in the market, whereas Tencent Cloud, Fujitsu Cloud Services, IBM Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud is used by some of the entrepreneurs and own a lesser portion in the current market. TechRepublic recent survey As the demand for a multi-cloud approach is increasing rapidly, it wouldn't be wrong if we say that multi-cloud holds the future. Even this approach has arrived in many business sectors and in various ways, which include ways of carrying out business, ushering new IT strategies, and much more. Today competition among cloud providers is also increasing as every one of them wants to provide much better service to the businesses on their demand. Even businesses give priority to a cloud approach before choosing any of the available ones for their business, now the for the businesses as they have a wide variety to choose from. 31% of businesses go for public cloud while 45% go for hybrid cloud and rest go for public or private cloud approach for their business. hybrid cloud is no more best option (Source) Top Reasons That Justify Why Businesses Must Opt for a Multi-Cloud Approach The multi-cloud approach allows businesses to reshape their business field. predicts that remarkable growth has been noted in the public cloud services market worldwide, it was found that public cloud revenue jumped and reached 17.5% in 2019. It is also predicted that it will reach around $332 billion in just three years (that is by 2022). There is no single point to doubt that growth has been driven by cloud infrastructure services, as more than a third of businesses cloud investments in a multi-cloud approach keeping it as a top-three investment priority. Gartner's recent report Multi-cloud is far beyond infrastructure, this approach encompasses various cloud-based tools that businesses use or needs to run or perform various activities of their organization. Many of the businesses have already started using various cloud-based services for marketing automation, accounting, analytics, and much more. The growing demand for a multi-cloud approach has made it win for Microsoft’s Azure, In October, the software giant bagged a massive competitive $10 billion contract. Even it has powered its marketing cloud due to which it has become a prime necessity in its multi-cloud strategy. (Source) Multi-cloud cloud approach allows businesses to use connected and multiple cloud services to reduce overall costs, become more agile with the application infrastructure, increase scalability, etc. This approach comes with huge potential and possesses the capacity to meet the specific needs of the businesses. Although multiple cloud solutions are complex, it helps businesses to meet their targeted goals in no time. There are various reasons that justify why businesses must opt for a multi-cloud approach for their business, they are: Utilize existing investment. Get unique capabilities. Operate freely from anywhere. Optimize costs. Provide sturdy infrastructure. The multi-cloud approach allows businesses to expand their business exponentially. They even get the flexibility to add or change cloud providers whenever they want, it will be advisable for them to choose their service provider, keeping in mind the market evolution. Effective Ways to Implement a Multi-Cloud Approach for Your Business More than responded that a multi-cloud strategy is proved to be a boon for their business. They also added that using multiple private and public clouds can reduce their application workload and can manage each information related to their business. 86% of respondents Over recent years, most of the cloud providers have experienced a drastic expansion in need of the business, they used on an average three public cloud and four private clouds. Unsurprisingly, a significant jump between intermediate and advanced users can be measured by cloud service providers as there is a huge adoption of cloud service by the businesses. (Source) Before moving to any decision about cloud service implementation, businesses have to consider the following steps. They can even explore steps to know how to leverage multi-cloud solution advantages in a much better way. The multi-cloud approach provides various benefits to businesses. But to leverage, its benefits businesses have to make sure that they implement the right cloud strategy for their business. Business needs to define its aims and motivations before adopting the cloud strategy. Some of the business goals which businesses can achieve with cloud service are listed below: Find Key Areas to Implement Cloud Quickening application delivery pace. Improving IT efficiency. Reducing IT infrastructure cost. Enhancing automation. Expand as per the new market. Every business needs an effective strategy when it comes to expanding business growth and success. Businesses these days are also leveraging fruitful results after seeking help from it will help you to reach more customers worldwide. But when it comes to satisfying all their customer's needs and manage the business effectively then cloud strategy comes into the spotlight. Today a large number of businesses have opted for multi-cloud and thus developed a hybrid strategy, which is simply a compo of private as well as public cloud options. Outlet Cloud Strategy pay per click service The cloud journey is not quite a touch for every business. They are always at the security risk as there is a fear of data threat, but when they use a cloud solutions, then it ensures data safety. It also helps them to manage every activity of their business very effectively and smartly. Businesses can also automate needed controls across a different area, which includes operations, finance, inventory, provisioning, and many more. Overcome Common Cloud Hurdles Businesses need to implement a centralized group of clouds for managing cloud initiatives. Define cloud policies before implementing the same for your business, also check its management cost. Make sure that the cloud team includes security, finance, procurement, development, and much more. Make sure that the team is capable enough to fulfill primary roles criteria, which simply include: Start Your Cloud Journey Cloud architecture. DevOps Engineers. Management specialists. Project managers. Make Sure the Multi-Cloud Approach Fits Your Business Needs Businesses can use various cloud business automation platform, which is available in the market these days, this can help them to manage various cloud environments. This cloud environment can include private, public, and provides various services to businesses. This service includes: Cloud provisioning and billing services. Support & inventory management. Marketing and Sales management. Business Intelligence. Customizable marketplace to sell cloud. Multi-Cloud Approach: Opt It to Prepare Your Business For Future! Implementing and adopting a multi-cloud approach for your business with a little budget is a daunting task. Many of the businesses hesitate to jump to this advance approach due to its complexity. This is one of the common concerns of all the startups who have just established their branches in a fiercely competitive market. But they have to understand that it's the future and if they don't adopt it, then they will remain far back in the competitive business race. However, before choosing the multi-cloud solutions, there are several questions which businesses have to consider, they are: Whether the solutions are user-friendly? Will it scale up company growth? Can the solutions help them to create a single source with minimal maintenance? Once they find all the answers, they can just adopt the right cloud solution for their business and can enjoy the fruit of success even after. By adopting the multi-cloud approach, they can quickly achieve the targeted goals in their business. It can also help them to make their business advance and future proof. All Image: (Source)

Multi-Cloud Approach⁠: An Excellent Way to Future-Proof Your Business

There’s no doubt: DevOps and the sheer scale of the software it enables have truly revolutionized the world of software development. Evolving from humble single-server beginnings two decades ago, it’s finally reached the point where we can build elastic software at scale, thanks to cloud and orchestration layers such as IaaS, containers, Kubernetes, and serverless (FaaS). New developments create new challenges. As developers try to keep pace with the ever-increasing complexity, speed, and scale of their software, they are realizing that are the new bottleneck, still stuck working with the same development and debug tools from a simpler age. they A torrent of new challenges The most beloved characteristics of modern software, and those which make it so powerful — scale, speed, extreme modularity, and high distribution — are also the qualities that make developing and maintaining it so difficult. These new challenges can be roughly divided into three categories or levels: , , and . complexity connectivity development These categories are closely related; often challenges in one category are solved by translating the problem to the next level up. This ‘challenge flow’ isn’t a straightforward vertical waterfall but is rather best envisioned as a cascading spiral. Just as complexity and connectivity spur development, development challenges lead to greater degrees of complexity, and so forth. Complexity challenges Complexity challenges are a direct result of software solutions tackling more complex problems, making them the most obvious set of challenges. They include: Developing distributed modular systems (aka microservices), which requires engineers to take time to plan how to break down, deploy and connect software. Developing scalable software. Engineers must consider what scale the solution will need to support. (What ever happened to “this server supports up to X users?”) Handling data complexity in transit and at rest (usually coupled with “big data”). Modern software requires engineers to plan for extreme cases of throughput (high traffic, workloads), fast processing (real-time), storage, and search. What used to be a unique skill-set just a few years ago is now expected of every full-stack engineer (“You know Hadoop / Redis / Mongo / Kafka… right?”), raising the bar of most software projects. Saving your data as a .csv file or even a local SQL database is rarely an option anymore. The skillset developers require to address these challenges is constantly growing, along with the time and energy that they need just to get started — to understand the problem space and assess how the available tools can be optimally applied . Often when complexity issues become too great to manage, the problem escalates to become a next-level challenge, with complexity encapsulated in a new solution or method. Adding encapsulated software solutions such as databases, memcache, message-queues and ML engines in effect “delegates” the problem to be solved by the way we weave and orchestrate the overall solution. Once a specific pattern of complexity-to-connectivity escalation starts to be repeated frequently, it usually translates into a new standard development method or solution. connectivity Connectivity challenges Connectivity challenges result from the way modern software is woven together. There are at least three parallel connectivity chains: — connectivity within the software solution, such as the connections between microservices or modules Interconnectivity — connectivity with other software solutions including 3rd party servers, SDKs and SaaS External connectivity the configuration and orchestration layer used to build, deploy, and manipulate the software solution. Meta-connectivity — In even the simplest of layouts, each connectivity layer comprises dozens of elements, as well as multiple connections the layers. Just keeping track of all the connections and data flows is a huge — even sisyphean — management and architectural effort. between Now, consider that connections constantly change due to changing needs or as part of the architecture itself, as for load-balancing. Systems quickly reach a point where developers must invest many hours — even weeks in some cases — to understand what connects to what in the software solution they are working on. The days of are long gone. “That box is connected to that box, and that’s the wire connecting them” We’ve already listed plenty of ‘frosting’ on the connectivity ‘cake’, but let’s not forget the cherry on top: Engineers are expected not only to understand all aspects of connectivity but to design, build, monitor and maintain them so that the overall solution is secure and meets all required standards. This is mind-bogglingly difficult when even the smallest defect in the smallest element can bring the entire house down. It’s like saying to the engineers, ” security and compliance. “You know that huge haystack you’re trying to pile up? Make sure all those pieces of hay connect just right, and while you’re at it, check for needles, too. As time progresses (both within projects and in general) connectivity layouts grows beyond the ability of the human mind to keep track of, developers turn to the meta-connectivity layer, and try to automate and orchestrate connectivity (e.g. Puppet/Chef/Ansible, Kubernetes, Istio, Helm…). “You like code, right? So, here’s more code to orchestrate your code while you are writing code”. When this modus operandi, often described as ‘configuration as code’ approaches maturity it transfers to the next level of challenges — And elevates the resolution of each challenge to a software solution in its own right. development. Development challenges Development challenges are the classic pains involved in producing functional software within a framework. These emerge from the growing gap between the power of modern software and developers’ ability (or lack thereof) to keep pace with it. Moreover, since all the challenges from the previous levels gradually propagate to this one, the challenges here are at the bleeding-edge of the dev/devops experience. These include: Dev environment challenges Dev environment challenges require developers to assemble, learn, and manage all tools and workflows chosen for the software solution being developed: The sheer number of tools and methodologies is overwhelming and still rising, even after the huge growth of the past decade, to name just a few: IDEs, source-controls, compilers, transpilers, DBA tools, cloud consoles, development servers, debuggers, orchestrators, monitoring agents, task / ticket management, alerting solutions. Context switching makes matters worse. This ungodly pile of tools doesn’t hit developers just once, but continues to bombard them. Developers must always be ready to deal with a different situation. ( “It was raining Git commits yesterday but today I’ve been waiting for hours for it to start snowing containers… Oh wait, it’s actually going to be a typhoon of tickets with a chance of tracing.”) Today, for developers, “getting into the zone” is no longer a matter of efficiency; it’s essential for basic productivity. And that’s before we complicate the stack with AI, quantum-computing, bio-computing, and other miracles. (“If you think multithreaded programming is hard, I have some bad news for you…”) Replicating bugs Often the first step toward understanding a bug is observing it. The most basic approach to observation is replication of the bug in a controlled (usually local) environment. Sadly, with modern software, replication has become a herculean feat. The many challenges and factors mentioned above interact to create cases so complex and interconnected that any attempt to simulate them is doomed to fail, or break the budget trying. ( “We think the issue was a result of rain in Spain, and a butterfly beating its wings… Alright, so let’s start by building a life-size model of Spain, and I’ll check Amazon for bulk butterfly shipments.”) As in vitro bug replication becomes less of an option, in vivo observability becomes a must. Unfortunately, developers often discover that their ancient toolbox is ill-equipped for the task. The old tools simply don’t work in modern software environments; the reason usually comes down to loss of access. You can’t access the ephemeral: multiple layers of encapsulation, the result of translating complexity challenges into connectivity, have made access an issue, as layers like containers, Kubernetes, and serverless take ownership of the software environment. The issue is clearest for serverless / FaaS. Not only do developers lack access to the server, but as far as they are concerned there no server. Even if by some trick or hack one gains access to an underlying server through all the layers, it’s practically impossible to pinpoint a specific server/app since these fluctuate, controlled by orchestration layers, which constantly remove and add servers on the fly. is Bringing an SSH knife to a K8S gunfight: with access lost, existing tools have become obsolete. SSH, which provided an all powerful direct command-line console, has become unusable in most cases and is at best, a huge stability risk. Traditional debuggers (in contrast to Rapid Production Debuggers) have nothing to attach More significantly, the idea of breaking (setting a breakpoint) on a server in production is unacceptably risky, since it is likely to literally BREAK production or at best, knock microservices and functions out of sync, removing any chance of replicating or debugging substantial issues in a distributed system. to. IDEs used to represent a developer’s full view of the system from code through compiling to building and running. They enabled developers to sync their views and approaches to software they share. IDEs were never very close to live systems, but the gap between them has grown so great that they can no longer create shared views. While integration to modern source control (e.g. Git) and CI/CD solutions helps, the gap is still large. The CI/CD bottleneck With access lost and few alternatives, if any, developers have turned to deploying code as the main way to achieve access. Any need to interact with software translates to writing more code, merging it, testing it, approving and of course, finally deploying it. This approach is leveraged for adding/removing features, getting observability (monitoring and investigating), and applying fixes and patches. This overwhelming dependency on code deployment creates a bottleneck as all these deployments fight for space in the pipeline and the attention of those who maintain it. As the flow of challenges continues spiraling onwards, it gathers momentum. Today’s torrent is but a taste of the challenges the future holds. Once these challenges of modern software development are brought into focus, a clear picture emerges of a huge gap between the power of modern software and developers’ ability to keep pace with it. We see this most often in development challenges but in the other challenge levels as well. Bridging that gap is a key capability we require from modern dev and devops tools. observability gap A bridge over troubled waters Currently, only a handful of solutions is available to developers who face these challenges. Most developer tools have remained stagnant for years. . That said, the modern developer toolbox have some new solutions. These include solutions designed to enable greater focus, solutions that attempt to do more with the limited available data, and solutions that try to bridge the observability gap by improving on the deployment cycle. An engineer from 20 years ago would be completely baffled by modern servers in the cloud, but would recognize a current IDE or debugger in seconds does “Like a glove” — Tailored observability views With many modern software challenges starting to repeat and consolidate into known forms and formats (such as Docker, K8S, Serverless functions) a new breed of tools has emerged that identifies these patterns, and leverages their knowability to tailor specific solutions. Within this category are next-generation APM solutions such as , which provide views built specifically for on top of existing APM offering. In fact, you’ll find that most APMs adjust and provide capabilities for the microservices world, although not always as first-class citizens. DataDog Containers and Kubernetes In an even more modern tailored approach, we find solutions doubling down on structured data and specifically , such as (alongside open source projects such as and ). These identify the specific pain of reconstructing a distributed system behaviour, much as a detective reconstructs a crime scene, and arise from the very nature of microservice architectures. Tracing HoneyComb.io Zipkin Jager For Serverless, we find solutions like and , which are tailored specifically to the FaaS use case and target specific pain points such as discovery, management, and pricing. These issues, of course, were present before, but became more acute with Serverless. Epsagon Lumigo “Deus Ex Machina” — Advanced analysis With software grown big, big data is not only a challenge, but also a means of tackling the problem. Multiple solutions harness the strengths of machine-learning to attain observability, and some use it as a primary approach. Examples include solutions like and . Coralogix Anodot “Developers of the world, unite!” — Advanced workflows Harnessing machines to solve machine problems is a start, but it isn’t a silver bullet. As a result, many solutions focus on building a better developer workflow on top of the views and alerts provided by the automated part of the solution. is one great example and specifically with their recent release of Sentry 9, they improve the cooperative workflow on top of the existing exception management platform. Sentry.io “Getting a taste of the real stuff” — Canary deployments Most solutions reviewed here so far, and most solutions in the devops space in general, work by deriving value from data that exists in the system, or that can be collected in advance by focusing on a specific pattern (such as tracing). While a significant step forward, these still leave us highly dependent on the CI/CD channel to iterate by delivering new data from production by updating log lines or SDK calls that feed the systems upstream. One way to reduce pressure on the pipeline is by using , a variant on green-blue deployments. They enable developers to expose new code (in this case, the necessary observability changes) to a limited percentage of production, without affecting all of production. It also allows faster rollbacks. canary deployments Recipes for canary deployments can be found for most leading CI/CD tools such as and . GitLab CodeFresh Yet a huge gap still remains: What if the needed data isn’t within the limited canary percentage? While canary deployments reduce the friction and risk of observing production, they still leave most of it on the table, making it an expensive and risky effort that most can’t afford. “Bridging the gap with agility” — Rapid data collection Despite the many solutions above, a gap remains between the observability data developers need from live systems and the pace at which they can iterate to collect and deliver that data to their various solutions (including some listed here). A new cohort of solutions attempts to bridge this gap by completely decoupling data collection from the CI/CD pipeline and thus eliminating the friction, risks, and bottleneck that create the gap. These rapid solutions collect and drive data on demand without prior planning, creating evanescent bridges as needed, instead of trying to anticipate specific bridges for predictable cases. This ephemeral access approach, aligns with the ephemeral nature of modern software. Rapid Production Debugging solution is an example which leverages instrumentation and opcode manipulation capabilities to enable developers to collect data from live environments and pipeline it to whichever platform they need. (Full disclosure: author is a co-founder of Rookout) Rookout A glimpse into the future We’ve come a long way. Developers from the past would definitely envy the amazing accomplishments that enable modern software architectures. But when it comes to the tools we provide developers, we are not there yet. Devops has launched the world of software forward at tremendous speeds, but the from keeping pace with their own software. complexity, connectivity, and development challenges left in its wake are preventing developers Now is the time to take another leap forward by embracing the new solutions quickly and actively working to bridge the observability gap. and more. In the not-too-distant future we can reach a point where the pace of software evolution is matched by software observability, creating a feedback loop that endlessly increases the speed of creation. A future where no one is left behind. By more effectively connecting tools to one another, creating better workflows on top of them, and finding true agility in data collection and observability, we can bridge the gap About Or Weis: Or Weis is CEO and co-founder of , a Rapid debugging and observability solution for live systems. Rookout Rookout sets non-breaking breakpoints that collect any data you want and deliver it on the fly wherever you need it, when you need it. All without writing more code, re-deploying or restarting.

Is DevOps leaving developers behind?

It was a crisp San Francisco morning. Louis [name changed] was feeling confident, cable car track lines whirring in the background, as he stepped into his local cafe to grab his morning coffee. Strolling down the hill to his software-as-a-service company, the bright sun matches his prospects. The company, built from a three month coding binge in Louis’ tiny south bay apartment, was becoming a real business — in sight of the mythical “ ” stage of $10M a year in annually recurring revenue.  Later that week (February 2016), and stocks by more than 30%. Some companies — such as data visualization platform Tableau, saw their values cut in half. This culminated in the mighty Linkedin acquiescing to Microsoft. The next Monday had a cold chill in the air — grimacing, Louis zipped his jacket up against the cold, rushing to his office, his quiet morning routine looking like an oddly distant memory. Along with a day of fog, this chill ushered in Cloud 3.0. unkillable SaaS technology plunged SaaS is dying. Here’s why. The early innings of cloud were a relatively friendly place for entrepreneurs — following in the wake of the Goliath Salesforce, all scrappy folks had to do was attack an old, underserved market. Or maybe even just build a product for the little companies who had previously been ignored. The markets reacted very favorably to this new “stickier” revenue — and valuations for high-growth companies were incredibly favorable. The experience was better, faster to set up, and easier to manage than ever before. Products could quickly evolve, improve and delight their customers.  But as — the SaaS revolution’s success may lead to it’s own downfall: Gil Dibner notes [T]he easy availability and mass adoption of cloud-based (SaaS) technology makes advanced software systems so much easier/cheaper/faster to build that “value” is rapidly bleeding out of the software stack. Yes, software is eating the world, but software’s very ubiquity is starting to threaten the ability to extract value from software. In other words, the ability to write and deploy code is no longer a core value driver. of Greylock (as well as Dibner) notes that the traditional moats enterprise technology companies have enjoyed are : Jerry Chen fading away fast In an era of cloud and open source, deep technology attacking hard problems is becoming a shallower moat. The use of open source is making it harder to monetize technology advances while the use of cloud to deliver technology is moving defensibility to different parts of the product. Companies that focus too much on technology without putting it in context of a customer problem will be caught between a rock and a hard place — or as I like to say, “between open source and a cloud place.” It wasn’t apparent to Louis — or any of the aspiring new entrepreneurs — that even if you found a moat, this new way of doing business had two severe problems: . and costs Stacking Switching Stacking Software empires of old — Oracle, SAP, and others — had a very easy path to accelerate their own growth: . Buy growing software firms, cut research and development budgets and attach the acquired product to their internal sales force for significant new distribution. Nearly overnight, a $10M a year company could freeze future development, cut its most expensive costs, and become a $40, $50 — even $100M a year business. All this new value realized — just by plugging into the acquirer’s distribution paths.  But now in a SaaS world — software is continually changing and growing, shepherded by the product and engineering teams. The monthly contract value is often far less than the customer acquisition costs (mostly sales and integration). Creating and capturing real value requires up-front investment, and only pays out for happy, long-standing customers.  Thus, for a SaaS acquirer, the team either has to be small enough (and the market large enough) to warrant significant investment, or else have sufficient scale to make a real contribution to the bottom line. Everything else in between is too expensive and too hard to roll up to scale.  Stacking revenue just isn’t as simple as it was in the days of shrink-wrapped software in a box… turn-key M&A Switching SaaS companies enjoy relative ease of on-boarding new customers — no on-prem data to move, easy integration hooks, etc. — but so do their competitors. To make matters worse, there’s even a whole class of SaaS companies built to make switching easier. They emerged from trying to solve their own challenge — attempting to enter a SaaS business and finding a moat: Peter was annoyed. An energetic young fellow — he faced a pretty serious problem: people weren’t even willing to try his company’s analytics product. Even though it was (in 2012) a very immature market — and the current offerings lacked a lot of what customers wanted. Why? It was simply too much time and engineering cost — to migrate from the nascent “incumbent” analytics platforms. So Peter and his team build middleware to make it easy to switch between SaaS providers (maybe then people might try his system). Then, developers around the world found it, and helped usher in a new level of connectivity. (Since this was written, to Startup School.) Segment Peter Reinhardt told this story himself Not large enough to stack, not worthless (or weak enough) to die SaaS’s own success is it’s own enemy — the cost and the time to build novel things has fallen significantly. Thus as a software company hits real scale, it’s left in a no man’s land — not large enough to stack, not worthless (or weak enough) to die — but too much competition — from the low end, the high end, from customers cobbling together a series of other tools — to prevent any real growth. When Google — that a clever person could use to replace nearly any different app needs their company might have — we know change is in the air. releases a full app building tool Enter Cloud 3.0 New Cloud Techniques. Image credit . The Onion The next chapter of Cloud software will lead to an explosion of new vendors and offerings. But they won’t quite look the same as before — expect lots of point solutions (run by small teams or even individuals) and software as a delivery for more elaborate (e.g. human-in-the-loop) service. This new way of doing business is still developing rapidly. But here’s a spotting guide to identify this new breed of company in the wild:  Cloud 3.0 Company Differentiators: one click auth, integrations with all major platforms with relevant data sources to power the tool Connect from anywhere: complete developer APIs and export functionality — and maybe even storing core data in one or more other vendors’ systems Open platform: many happy customers may only ever interact programmatically — no more interfaces, dashboards or logins to remember. Just value and connectivity. Programmatic use: most companies seem to fit in one or more of the categories below: Clear core value: One or More Core Value (e.g. Lead Scoring) I: Best-in-Class Point Solution — the integrations are the product (e.g. Segment, , ) II: Connectivity Platform mParticle Zapier — the core value of product who happen to deployer or deliver their value through this product’s pipes. III: Solution Ecosystem might actually be other developers Interestingly, Salesforce — who brought us “The Cloud” — may even be the first major window to what next generation companies look like. After all, one could argue the value to a SMB choosing Salesforce (instead of the many ways to manage sales contacts) has become: A standardized schema for CRM data Easy integrations with hundreds of other point solutions A pool of independent contractors with familiarity of the problem space We could imagine even faster innovation if only there were a way to establish trust with many remote vendors and workers, each offering the very best point solution in the world. 10 Million “companies” powered by the very best person in the world at their solution. Sounds a little bit like Ethereum and the token-based economy… (More on this another day.) Some of Louis’ customers started to erode. They love his service, but are wondering if he could reduce the price, since some of them may have trouble raising their next round of funding at the current pace. Besides, the costs of everything — compute, storage, etc. — are all plummeting. Maybe the ailing companies should consider rolling their own version of Louis’ software to cut the monthly bills?   This is the beginning of a post-SaaS world playing out — fewer and fewer companies will break through. Few companies can grow fast enough. The rest…a prolonged stasis, the day to day management of what boils down to a bond — a known flow of future cash with some risk attached to it — just waiting for a buyer… What value do you uniquely — best in the world — provide? So to CEOs — what value do you uniquely — best in the world — provide? Do you have the market fit (and the moat) to make the jump in the next stages? What stops the next generation from copying your product and selling it for 1/10th the cost? You and Louis lie awake at night thinking these same things. Noah is a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur (and former SaaS company CEO). You can find him on Twitter and LinkedIn .

What Comes After SaaS?

Why the Fuss About Serverless?

Use the open-source integrated machine learning in MindsDB and the open-source data integration platform Airbyte to forecast Shopify store metrics. With the volume of data increasing exponentially, it’s critical for businesses focused on e-commerce to leverage that data as quickly and efficiently as possible. Machine learning represents a disruption to increase predictive capabilities and augment human decision making for use cases like price, assortment and supply chain optimization, inventory management, delivery management, and customer support. In this ‘how-to’ guide, we’ll provide step-by-step instructions showing you how to simply and inexpensively integrate machine learning into an existing Shopify account using , an open-source data integration platform, and , an open-source AutoML framework that runs on top of any database. Airbyte MindsDB Our guide will consist of two parts: Using Airbyte to extract your Shopify data and load it into a database. In our case, we’ll use the open-source DB PostgreSQL, but it can also be a different database of your choice. Using MindsDB to automatically build and train a machine learning model for predicting purchase orders. Let’s get started! We will assume you already have Airbyte set up via Docker. If not, here’s a link to a that shows how to do it. Getting Started article Step 1: Replicating Data from Shopify to PostgreSQL with Airbytea. Setting Up the Airbyte Shopify Connector is going to allow us to get your Shopify data and store it in a database or data warehouse. For this article, we will be storing the data obtained via the Shopify connector into a PostgreSQL database. Airbyte’s Shopify connector The Airbyte Shopify connector is capable of syncing abandoned checkouts, collections, custom collections, customers, metafields, orders, products and transactions to the destination of your choice. Let’s get started by spinning up the Airbyte web app. First, go into the directory where you cloned the Airbyte repository, and then run the following in your terminal:‍ docker-compose up Then, visit in your browser to see the Airbyte dashboard. http://localhost:8000 In the section, click on the button in the top right corner of the dashboard to add a new source. Sources + new source In the new screen, enter the name of the source-we’ll call the source but you can name it anything you want. Then, in the dropdown, select shopify-source, Source type Shopify. Selecting the connector will prompt Airbyte to load the configuration parameters that the Airbyte Shopify connector needs. This might take a while if it is the first time you are selecting the Shopify connector. Airbyte will pull the Shopify connector image from Docker Hub behind the scenes. Shopify When it’s done pulling the image, you will see the following: Let’s peek into the parameters the Shopify connector needs: : This will be the name of the shop on Shopify you want to replicate the data from. So if the URL to your shop is , the name of your shop will be . shop https://airbyte.myshopify.com airbyte : This will be the date you want Airbyte to start the replication from, and it takes the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD. start_date : This will be the password of a private app you created on your Shopify dashboard. api_password The shop name and can be filled in readily, but the api_password requires that you create a new private app on Shopify in case you don’t already have one. Let’s walk through creating a private app on Shopify and obtaining the password that we need to set up the Airbyte Shopify connector. start_date b. Creating a Shopify private app To create a Shopify private app, log into your Shopify dashboard and click on in the sidebar menu. Apps Then, click on the link at the bottom of the page. If you have not enabled private apps previously, you will see a screen to enable it. Click on the button. Manage private apps Enable private app development You will be taken to a screen to accept Shopify’s terms on private app development usage. Check the checkboxes if you agree, and then click on once again. Enable private app development Once private app development has been enabled, you will be redirected to a screen where you can create a private app. Click on the button to get started. Create private app In the section, fill in the private app name and emergency developer email. App details Go into to the Admin API section and perform the following: Click on the dropdown, and locate the in the list. Then, grant from the select box. Show inactive Admin API permissions Order API Read access Locate and and grant those as well. Shopify Payments disputes Shopify Payments payouts, Finally, click on the button to save your new private app. Save You will be greeted with a confirmation modal-just click on the button to confirm the creation of the private app. That’s it! Now we just need to get the private app API password. Create app On the same page, scroll down to the section and copy your private app API password. Admin API Then, head over to the Airbyte web UI dashboard and provide the Shopify connector configuration form with the password you just copied. In the Airbyte UI where you left off setting up Shopify, paste in the password you copied from Shopify and then hit . Set up Source c. Setting up the destination Once you have set up the source successfully, Airbyte will navigate to the destination screen. Click on the button in the top right corner. In the dropdown, click on add destination + add a new destination. Airbyte will validate the source and then present a form to enter the destination name and type. Enter as the name and choose as the destination type. To set up our Postgres destination, we will spin up a Postgres container via Docker. So run the following in your terminal: shopify-destination Postgres docker run — rm — name shopify-db -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password -v $HOME/docker/volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data -p 2000:5432 -d postgres Note that the bit of the above snippet is important to persist the data, as by default, data in a Postgres Docker container is ephemeral and will be lost when the container is destroyed. You can create the directory on your local machine (as we are assuming it doesn’t exist). Run the following to create it before the command to spin off the Docker container: -v $HOME/docker/volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data mkdir -p $HOME/docker/volumes/postgres Verify that the container is running. Then fill in the login credentials in the Airbyte dashboard. After Airbyte has set up the destination successfully, you will be presented with the schema of the data to be replicated onto the destination, and a dropdown to specify the syncing frequency with the source. In this tutorial, we chose manual, as we want direct control over when our syncs take place . Then hit the button. Set up connection Airbyte will navigate you to the destination page where you can hit the button to start the replication. To monitor the syncing, you can click on the destination name to see the syncing process and status. Launch Once Airbyte is done replicating the data onto the Postgres database, the status of the sync will change to . To confirm that the syncing was successful, you can run the below command: Succeeded docker exec shopify-source psql -U postgres -c “SELECT COUNT(*) FROM public.transactions;”‍ The above should return the count of all the records on the table. transactions Step 2: Forecasting Purchase orders with MindsDB The next step is to perform predictive analysis on top of the store data that we have imported inside the database. Before we do that, we need to first install MindsDB. There are a few ways to install it as described in the . Our suggestion is to always use as it encapsulates all of the dependencies for running MindsDB. To download the latest production image, run the following command: documentation Docker docker pull mindsdb/mindsdb Alternatively, if you have Python pre-installed on your machine, you can use to install the latest MindsDB version. To do that, create a new virtual environment and run: pip pip install mindsdb Then, to start the server run: docker run -p 47334:47334 mindsdb/mindsdb Or, if you have installed with run: pip python3 -m mindsdb‍ Finally, MindsDB Studio should be automatically started on your default browser on . http://127.0.0.1:47334/ a. Connect MindsDB and PostgreSQL There are three ways that you can use MindsDB. The first is through the graphical user interface called MindsDB Studio. The second way is using the REST APIs. To make the integration simple, you can use our Python or JavaScript SDKs. The third way is to do it directly inside the database through executing SQL statements. In this tutorial, we will explain everything via the MindsDB Studio so you can follow along visually. We will also share the SQL queries in case you want to test directly inside your database. To connect MindsDB and PostgreSQL from the left navigation menu, head over to integrations and click on the button Here, you will need to fill out all of the parameters for connecting to the PostgreSQL database. Add Database . The required parameters to connect to PostgreSQL are: Supported Databases: From the dropdown select PostgreSQL. : Let’s call it ShopifyData. Integration Name : The name of the database where you saved the shopify data. Database Host: The PostgreSQL host name or IP address. : The PostgreSQL port (default is 5432). Port : The user that has access to the database. Username : Password for the above user. Password After filling the form, click on . You have now successfully connected to PostgreSQL. The next step is to create a datasource from the data which you would like to use for model training. CONNECT b. Orders Data Let’s get an overview of the data. After we’ve imported the data inside PostgreSQL, Airbyte created different tables in the public schema. If you list the tables, you will notice that there are tables for , and a few other tables that Airbyte has created before importing the data. orders orders_refunds, products, transactions, abandoned_checkouts, The data that is important to predict the future number of orders is inside the table. Let’s so we can see the list of orders. There are more than 30 columns inside the table, but we will focus only on: orders SELECT * FROM orders; processed_at: The time when the order was processed. vendor: e.g if you are selling shoes, vendors will be Nike, Adidas, Vans, Converse, etc. : We will only the orders that are or already . financial_status SELECT Pending Paid There are a lot of additional options that you can use to do predictive analytics on top of the Shopify data. To keep the showcase simple, we will focus on the above 3 parameters and train a model that estimates the number of orders that the store will receive over the next period. Go to the Database Integrations dashboard and click on . In the popup, you will be able to SELECT the data to train the model:. NEW DATASET Let’s overview our query: SELECT SELECT processed_at::date AS order_day, COUNT(*) AS orders, (unnest(ARRAY(SELECT jsonb_array_elements(line_items)->>’vendor’))) as vendor FROM orders WHERE financial_status IN (‘pending’, ‘paid’) GROUP BY vendor, order_day; This query will select the time when the order was processed and cast it to YY:MM:DD format (without the time of the day, as we will be forecasting at a daily frequency). Then, select the vendor from the line_items column that contains the product info in JSON format. Finally, aggregate the number of orders per day for each vendor. Click on and MindsDB will create a new datasource called ShopifyOrders. CREATE If you preview the data, you will see the number of daily orders grouped by vendor. The above example shows the orders for and stores. It groups the daily orders for the past 5 years for different vendors like NIKE, VANS, ADIDAS, LEGO, MATTEL, etc. SHOES TOYS We now have data connected to MindsDB. The next steps are: Perform data analysis Train an ML model Predict the amount of future orders by querying the model c. Data Analysis In the dashboard, click on the button so that MindsDB can start with its automated data analysis procedure. In the background, it will iterate over each data record and display warnings if there are potential biases or outliers inside the data. If you click on some of the columns, it will display additional information for specific columns such as the type of the data, if there are any missing values, the number of distinct values, and if there are potential biases it will show more information. Dataset QUALITY By performing data analysis, you will get more information about your data and decide if you trust the warnings shown by MindsDB to act upon them (remember, a good dataset is crucial for good ML models), or you can ignore them and continue with the model training. d. Model Training To train a new model click on the tab from the left navigation bar, and then on the button Inside thepopup form, you will need to input all of the required information so that MindsDB can start training a time series forecasting model: Predictors TRAIN NEW . The datasource from which to select the data. In this example, ShopifyOrders. FROM: The name of the new model, e.g shopify_orders. Predictor Name: The target variable that we want to predict. In this example the number of orders count. Select Only The Column to be Predicted: Columns that we want to exclude from the model training. You can leave this empty as we are training the model with only 3 columns. Select Columns to be Removed for Training: Calculate the margin of error in a range from [0.0–1.0]. Leave it empty, so the default value of 0.01 will be used. Sample Margin of Error: Used for testing purposes to speed up the model training. Leave this empty unless you have a time constraint. Stop Training After: Train the model on GPU or CPU. If you have a GPU, select this checkbox to obtain a speedup in the training and querying phases. Use GPU: Select Yes in the checkbox. Is it a Timeseries Prediction Problem?: The columns based on which the data should be ordered. Select processed_at. Order by: The columns based on which to group entities in the data. We will group by vendor, effectively analyzing each different TOY and SHOE vendor on its own to produce accurate forecasts. Depending on how the dimension data is grouped, this can yield anywhere from a handful to hundreds (or more!) time series that the MindsDB predictor will learn to forecast. Group by: Use default value of 1. This means our model will be trained to predict the amount of orders that should come in the next day. Number of Future Predictions: Use the previous values of the target columns as additional information to the time-series specific part of the model. Leave it as checked. Use Previous Target: The number of rows to look back when making a prediction. Set it at 10 to consider the last 10 days’ amount of orders when forecasting. Look Back Window: To start with the training click on TRAIN. Alternatively, you can train the model automatically directly inside the database by just runing the following query: INSERT INTO mindsdb.predictors(name, predict, select_data_query) VALUES(‘shopify_orders’, ‘orders’, ‘SELECT processed_at::date AS order_day, COUNT(*) AS orders, (unnest(ARRAY(SELECT jsonb_array_elements(line_items)->>”vendor”))) as vendor FROM orders WHERE financial_status in (“pending”, “paid”) group by vendor, order_day;’); To get more information about the INSERT query visit . MindsDBs PostgreSQL docs MindsDB will promptly start the automated machine learning pipeline, deducting the data type of each column, instantiating an encoder for each one to obtain informative intermediate representations of the data, and then use this to train a forecasting model based on a mix of recurrent neural networks and gradient boosters. Finally, it will perform a model analysis to offer insights as to how good you can expect the forecasts to be. When this procedure finishes, the status will change to . Next, click on the PREVIEW button. The model preview dashboard provides insights related to the trained model. The first section shows the model accuracy and how MindsDB did the dataset splitting. COMPLETED You can see that the forecasting accuracy for the shopify_orders model is around 74%, which means that 74% of the time, the true amount of orders fell within the bounds of the predicted range for the held-out validation dataset. The next section shows the column importance where MindsDB is rating the columns from 0 as the least important to 10 as the most important column for making a good prediction. Given the settings we used, our time series forecaster needed all three columns to train, so this part of the analysis is not applicable to this predictor. The last section presents a confusion matrix, where if you hover over the matrix you will see the percentage of time where the model predicted the number of orders correctly or the percentage of the time where the model misclassified the number of orders. A perfect forecaster would show a thin straight diagonal. In this case, the diagonal is still well-formed, which reinforces the reported accuracy of 74%. e. Predict the Number of Orders The model was successfully trained. How can we use it to predict the number of orders? From the left navigation tab click on the option,and then on the button Query New Query . Let’s imagine that we want to forecast “ .” How many Converse orders will the store get next Friday? In the dropdown, select the vendor e.g Converse and the date e.g 6/18/2021 for which we want to predict the number of orders. Then, click on the and in less than a second MindsDB will return the predicted value. RUN QUERY If you want to get predictions directly from the database run: SELECT orders AS predicted, orders_confidence AS confidence, orders_explain AS info FROM mindsdb.shopify_ordersWHERE “vendor”=’Converse’ AND “order_day”=’2021–06–18';‍ In this example, for Converse products on Friday 18 June 202, MindsDB thinks that the store will get around 57 orders with a minimum order of 32 and maximum orders of 78. Also, MindsDB is 74% confident that this will be the correct number of orders. The width of the predicted region can be further tuned by the user at the expense of modified confidence: a tighter pair of bounds would imply less confidence in predictions and vice versa. Another thing to note is that queries will be more accurate as you provide more historical context. Wrapping up We have shown how easy it is to use Airbyte to extract and load data inside the database, and then leverage MindsDB to perform predictive analytics to drive better business based decisions. For further information and examples check out the documentation on , and for a limited time sign up for a free MindsDB Cloud account at Airbyte MindsDB http://cloud.mindsdb.com. This article can also be seen at: https://airbyte.io/recipes/implement-machine-learning-for-your-shopify-store-with-mindsdb

How to Forecast Purchase Orders for Shopify Stores Using Open-Source

Having a blog to write and share our knowledge on the internet is essential for visibility and making us known in our field as an authority on a subject. This article will teach you how to build a blog that has dynamic pages for each article. Table of Contents Prerequisites Getting Started What is Nuxt? What is Nuxt Content? What is Cloudinary? Creating a Blog with Nuxt Creating the Blog Notes Fetching the Posts Creating Dynamic Pages Final Thoughts Learn More To follow along, view the codebase and its repo on and the for reference. GitHub demo Prerequisites The following are required to complete this tutorial: Cloudinary account. is free Sign up Basic knowledge of JavaScript Familiarity with Vue Getting Started To get started, open up the terminal and run the command: npx create-nuxt-app blog-for-developers The command above will kick off a command-line interface (CLI) prompt that will allow us to configure various aspects of our project. Now that the boilerplate is set up with all the files and folders, let’s run the development server which is accessible on inside the project. http://localhost:3000 # change directory to project folder cd blog-for-developers # start the development environment npm run dev NuxtJS is an open-source intuitive Vue framework that allows us to build user interfaces, making web development simple and powerful. What is Nuxt? During the initial setup of this project, we selected the Nuxt content module. This module lets us use our codebase as a Git-based headless CMS to access markdown, JSON, YAML, XML, and even CSV files through an API-like interface. With this module , it will inject the instance globally in our project to access it anywhere in a project. What is Nuxt Content? @nuxt/content $content Cloudinary is a cloud-service image and video management tool for web and mobile applications. With Cloudinary, we can upload, create, and manage digital experiences across any browser and device. What is Cloudinary? Creating a Blog with Nuxt Before we create the content for the blog in markdown using Nuxt content, let’s first create the landing page for the blog that will include the navigation links and some text. In the , we can add our favorite font to the head section and use a particular font family as seen below: Add Font Style nuxt.config.js file The above code block will have no effect on the page until we write the CSS that will use the font. Now, add the following code to the which will include the navigation links and some text on the home page. Remove the component, . pages/index.vue <Tutorial /> <template> <section class =" showcase "> < header > < h2 class =" logo "> < nuxt - link to ="/"> ecosurf </ nuxt - link > </ h2 > < nav class =" nav desktop "> < ul > < li class =" nav__list "> < nuxt - link to ="/ blogs "> Stories </ nuxt - link > </ li > </ ul > </ nav > </ header > < video autoplay loop muted src =" https: // res . cloudinary . com / terieyenike / video / upload / v1651393236 / mixkit - tropical - island - landscape - view - 4692 - large_yanvml . mp4 "></ video > < div class =" overlay "></ div > < div class =" text "> < h2 data - type =" uppercase " class =" stroke "> Never Stop </ h2 > < h3 data - type =" uppercase "> Exploring The World </ h3 > < p > View of the tropical island landscape, from a hill with houses, palm trees and many trees, and in the distance the hills that surround the sea, on a sunny day . </ p > </ div > < ul class =" social "> < li > < a href =" https: // twitter . com / terieyenike " rel =" noopener noreferrer " target =" _blank ">< img alt =" twitter profile " src =" https: // i . ibb . co / Wnxq2Nq / twitter . png "/></ a > </ li > < li > < a href =" https: // instagram . com / terieyenike " rel =" noopener noreferrer " target =" _blank ">< img alt =" instagram profile " src =" https: // i . ibb . co / ySwtH4B / instagram . png "/></ a > </ li > </ ul > </ section > </ template > In the above code block, we included a with the source of the video stored in Cloudinary with attributes such as autoplay, loop, and muted that mute the video when it loads. To obtain the media stored in Cloudinary, we upload our desired video to the media library tab. Thereafter, copy the URL which will be attached to the of the . <video> src <video> Also, we referenced the links in the navigation header with the component to both the home and the routes which we will create to view all our blogs. To make sure our page is styled with CSS, create a folder at the root of the project, , and include the following from this . In the file, update the file to include the created CSS file with the following: nuxt-link / /blogs assets/styles/main.css gist nuxt.config.js ... ...
 } export default { css : [ '@/assets/styles/main.css' ], Here is what our page should look like: Creating the Blog Notes To build our blog site, we need to have content to display and render on the page. First, create a directory and then the blog directory that will contain all the markdown files. Writing all the content in markdown supports a lot of the markdown syntax standards such as the headings, links, and code blocks with syntax highlighting for different programming languages. PS: The Nuxt content utilizes the content folder to store all the files. Here’s an example of a markdown file in the content directory. Add the following to the file . /blogs content content/blogs/egghead.md title: Egghead author: Teri Eyenike
    description: All we need to do is open up our terminal and run the command npm install @nuxt/content. Once it's installed, you'll see that inside of our package.json, we see our Nuxt Content module. Next, to finalize the setup, let's go ahead and open up our nuxt.config.js, and let's go ahead and scroll down to the section that's labeled Modules.
    date: May 2, 2021
    publishOn: 2021-05-02T00:00:00
    tags: ["learning", "platform"]
 --- --- cover _image: https://res.cloudinary.com/terieyenike/image/upload/v1651446130/pexels-jeremy-bishop-8241100_ oklfpe.jpg [ Egghead ]( https://www.egghead.io ) is a great platform for developers to enhance their skills!  Markdown files have the ability to add metadata using the concept of front matter which is denoted with the triple-dash syntax at the start and stop of the front matter. The metadata, is what is displayed to readers like the time of publication and excerpt of the blog content, is what is displayed to readers. Other various properties can be included. PS: Inside of the front matter, it uses the YAML syntax. To fetch the posts for the blog page, let’s create a new route under . Create a folder, called blogs, and in there create file for the directory, blogs. Next, copy and add the following code to the file to display the rendered markdown files. Fetching the Posts pages index.vue pages/blogs/index.vue <template> </template> // pages/blogs/index.vue < main > < header > < h2 class = "logo" > < nuxt-link to = "/" > ecosurf </ nuxt-link > </ h2 > < nav class = "nav desktop" > < ul > < li class = "nav__list" > < nuxt-link to = "/blogs" > Stories </ nuxt-link > </ li > </ ul > </ nav > </ header > < div class = "container section" > < div class = "container__grid" > < div v-for = "blog in blogs" :key = "blog.slug + blog.createdAt" class = "card" > < img :src = "blog.cover_image" alt = "blog photographs" /> < div class = "pad__card" > < div class = "author" > < p class = "author__name" > {{ blog.author }} </ p > < span > | </ span > < p > {{ blog.date }} </ p > </ div > < h2 class = "title" > {{ blog.title }} </ h2 > < p > {{ blog.description.substring(0, 150) }}... </ p > < button > < nuxt-link :to = "`/blogs/${blog.slug}`" > Read More </ nuxt-link > </ button > </ div > </ div > </ div > </ div > </ main > < script > export default { async asyncData ( {$content} ) { const blogs = await $content( "blogs" ).sortBy( "publishOn" , "desc" ).fetch() return { blogs } }, head ( ) { return { title : "Read interesting stories as a nomad" , meta : [ { hid : 'description' , name : 'description' , content : 'Daily and juicy content as you learn, work, and relax. WFH' } ] } } } </ script > < style scoped > header { background : #111111 ; position : unset; } .container { width : 85% ; max-width : 75rem ; margin -inline: auto; } .section { padding : 3em 0 ; } .container__grid { display : grid; gap: 2em ; grid-template- columns : repeat (auto-fit, minmax ( 19rem , 1 fr)); } .card { background : #f0f7f4 ; box-shadow : 0px 4px 3px rgba ( 0 , 0 , 0 , 0.1 ); border-radius : 5px ; } .card img { object-fit : cover; border-top-left-radius : 5px ; border-top-right-radius : 5px ; width : 100% } .pad__card { padding : 2em ; } .author { display : flex; align-items : center; } .author , .title { margin-bottom : 1em ; } .author span { margin : 0 0.3em ; } .author__name { text-transform : capitalize; } button { border : unset; padding : 1em 2em ; margin-top : 2em ; background : #0D5159 ; font-weight : 700 ; cursor : pointer; } button a { color : #fff ; } </ style > The code block above does the following: : used to generate our page from Nuxt as it generates individual files statically to users. We pass in the method where the blog notes are stored, the function, and the method. asyncData $content sortBy() fetch : takes two parameters, (sort it by date) and the desc attributes on how you want the content to appear based on the most recent content published sortBy() publishOn To make each blog article dynamic, we will assign it to a URL, where it’s the blog slug on the Read more button using the component. /blogs/ <nuxt-link> The last step for viewing the snippet of the rendered posts from the content directory is to use the v-for directive and loop over the blogs and render each article in a card. Rendering the posts Here is what the blog page should look like now: Creating Dynamic Pages Now let’s create pages for each blog post to have dynamic URL routes. In Nuxt, to create dynamic pages, we append an underscore before the .vue file name so as not to make the URL hardcoded. We then create the file under the blogs directory and add the following code: _slug.vue <template> </template> // pages/blogs/_slug.vue < main > < header > < h2 class = "logo" > < nuxt-link to = "/" > ecosurf </ nuxt-link > </ h2 > < nav class = "nav desktop" > < ul > < li class = "nav__list" > < nuxt-link to = "/blogs" > Stories </ nuxt-link > </ li > </ ul > </ nav > </ header > < div class = "container" > < div class = "return" > < nuxt-link to = "/" > < img alt = "back to home" src = "/home.png" /> </ nuxt-link > < span > / </ span > < nuxt-link to = "/blogs" > Blog </ nuxt-link > < span > / </ span > < p > {{ note.title.substring(0, 15) }}... </ p > </ div > < section > < h1 > {{ note.title }} </ h1 > < nuxt-content :document = "note" cla /> </ section > </ div > </ main > < script > export default { async asyncData ( {$content, route} ) { const note = await $content( `blogs/ ${route.params.slug} ` ).fetch() return { note } } } </ script > < style scoped > header { background : #111111 ; position : unset; } .container { width : 85% ; max-width : 75rem ; margin -inline: auto; } section { padding-bottom : 2em ; } .return { display : flex; margin : 1.5em 0 ; } .return img { width : 20px ; height : 20px ; } .return span { margin : 0 1em ; } h1 { margin-bottom : 1em } </ style > This block of code does the following: : We use the content to fetch a specific file from the directory blogs using the route parameter and the slug which will map to our actual file name ${route.params.slug} To render the markdown as actual content defined in the markdown file, we use the nuxt-content component and pass the prop of the with the entire object document note : Defining the scoped to the style element make sure that the styling only applies to a specific page scoped Final Thoughts The creation of a blog is great when you want to share your thoughts with a wider audience and Nuxt has provided us with a way to do so in this article. There are still other features we can still explore to make sure we have a robust blog website. Learn More Nuxt content Nuxt documentation Try out the live demo

How to Build Your Own Blog with Nuxt, Nuxt Content, and Cloudinary

Cómo crear su propio blog con Nuxt, Nuxt Content y Cloudinary

Comment créer votre propre blog avec Nuxt, Nuxt Content et Cloudinary

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Comparing Cloudinary CDN and Amazon AWS CDN CloudFront 

Crypto enthusiasts often face a conundrum when turning to cryptocurrency as a viable investment. An eternal question remains: To invest and forget, or to trade the notorious price swings for even more gains? shows a simple buy-and-hold strategy for Bitcoin the past six years would have yielded 1690% for investors. However, utilizing a long-short trading approach would have seen gains of over 2,500% at a minimum, or even 5,000% using a well-tweaked strategy. Academic research Needless to say, it’s easy to be allured by the prospect of trading cryptocurrencies with those statistics in mind. But as easy as it may look, trading is not for the faint-hearted, with even seasoned investors succumbing to sudden market movements and price drops — look no further than the “ in March this year which caused two very popular crypto funds, Cryptolab Capital and Adamant Capital, to fold overnight with their millions of dollars falling victim to the market. Black Thursday” event This is where a strategy becomes important. One could either take a fundamental approach towards the crypto market — looking at macro factors, correlations with the US equity indices, or Bitcoin miner-led market movements — or choose a technical strategy, meaning indicators and chart-reading to calculate probabilities of a market movement and place trades accordingly. A popular indicator is the Ichimoku Kinko Hyo, a so-called all-in-one trading system that was developed in the 1940s by Goichi Hosoda, a Japanese journalist. Its name translates to “equilibrium at a glance,” and allows traders to trade breakouts, identify support and resistance levels, and generally assess the group think behavior of the markets. “The Ichimoku Cloud has always been a comprehensive framework: it allows trend analysis, tells the trader when to stay out of the market completely, and provides clear signals with a high probability of success.” states Chairman Zen of MachinaTrader. “This combination allows the trader to act dispassionately and mechanistically in the market. And this also means that Ichimoku Cloud is ideal for creating an automated strategy." Here’s what the Ichimoku Kinko Hyo, or colloquially, the Ichimoku Cloud looks like: Daunted? Don’t be. The tool is easy to read and determine once each individual component is singled out. First, is the “Kumo” - the cloud: the big green and red zones in the chart, below, where price always seems to go and either establish a new trend or get rejected. Markets are usually directionless and sideways when trading in the Cloud, meaning traders usually sit out and avoid placing trades while price is inside the Cloud. The cloud is simply a calculation of the support and resistance equilibriums using previous price action of the past “x” periods. Generally, the longer the period “x” is, the less probability of a “false” signal (although absolutely nothing is absolutely certain in markets). Playing the Cloud is easy. Traders can go “long,” or bet on rising prices when price breaks above the Cloud, and “short,” or bet on decline if price breaks below the cloud. A green Cloud is a “support” area, one where the price is expected to see buying and subsequently continue an upward trend. Vice-versa for when the Cloud is red. In addition, the thicker the Cloud, the stronger its support/resistance. A thin Cloud is an indication that the market is unlikely to see much support/resistance when price approaches the Cloud. Hence, the thickness of the Cloud is an important consideration when trading the “Kumo”. Next is the Tenkan sen, or the “conversion line” as singled out (blue) in the chart below: The Tenkan sen calculates the average of the highest high and lowest low during the last “x” number of candles. Some traders feel that the Tenkan sen provides better points of support/resistance than a simple moving average. Here is a 21-period Tenkan sen and a 21-period simple moving average for comparison: Notice that when the Tenkan sen is flat, it indicates a trendless condition in the market during the last 21 candles. While an angled Tenkan sen shows the direction and relative momentum of price action during the last 21 candles. A moving average doesn’t respond in this manner, making the Tenkan sen a line that acts as both support/resistance and a directional indicator. Third, is the Kijun sen or the “base” line, which, similar to the Tenkan sen, is calculated from the highest high and lowest low averaged over the previous “x” number of candles. Why a duplicate? Because this component is calculated over a longer period than the Tenkan sen, thereby providing a second “slower” Tenkan sen for comparison, as well as, a longer timeframe indicator of support/resistance. A possible strategy — used by some traders — is to consider the Tenkan sen and Kijun sen in a similar manner as the popular “moving average crossover”. Trade long when the faster Tenkan sen crosses above the slower Kijun sen (indicating an uptrend) and trade short when the crossover occurs to the downside. Lastly, the Chikou span, or the “lagging” line. This one calculates the current price and shifts that back by “x” number of candles. The main signal given is “trend confirmation”. Once the Chikou span moves from above to below (or below to above) the Ichimoku Cloud it signals trend direction. In the chart, above, the lagging line breaks above the Kumo, providing a strong buy signal for traders. The move is said to be a “bullish” Kumo breakout, while the opposite of this - the Chikou breaking below the Cloud - is usually a “bearish” signal where traders might sell and offload positions. With these four components explained, the Ichimoku Cloud should now be more easy to understand and read. And here is why it is considered to be a “single, integrated strategy”: One glance at the chart provides the trader with an indication of trend (or lack thereof), support and resistance, potential breakouts, and similar past “setups”, making this freely available indicator a Swiss Army knife in any trader’s toolbox. Automate the Cloud? Ichimoku Cloud trading signals don’t necessarily require manual execution. Services like MachinaTrader, an online trading platform that allows traders to automate their strategies. A trader can code the logic of their strategy via the dashboard, or pick from already-coded algorithms (including Ichimoku Cloud), backtest its efficiency before deploying it live in the market. Traders can activate a terminal on the MachinaTrader dashboard and code their own complex trading strategies, define backtesting parameters, and much more. Traders can monetize successful strategies by making them available to other platform users. In addition, it allows you to choose to have a machine learning bot oversee select strategies. Bob, the trading robot can recommend improvements, leading to a more profitable trading strategy with suggestions of optimal parameters, for various market conditions, for indicators like the Ichimoku Cloud. The future of finance is here indeed.

Crypto-Trading with Ichimoku Cloud...And The World of Virtual Trading Assistants

Did you know that almost every person on our planet is a user of at least five types of social networking sites? Facebook alone, the most popular social network website, has 2.375 billion users. That is why developing a social network website often comes to the minds of entrepreneurs when they look at these astounding numbers. Building and managing your own social networking website comes to many when they are fed up with those bunch of features and content, which they may don't even want to use, making the platform over populated with posts not relevant to them. A simple example explaning this, is Instagram. After the initial public launch, it was mainly designed for artists for sharing photos. Then IGTV Videos were introduced, followed by Direct Messaging. Now, they have introduced Reels, which brings all features of TikTok and similar apps (as TikTok is banned in India and some other countries). This leaves the platform much similar to Facebook. This is a detailed tutorial explaining how to build a social networking website from scratch in Django along with CDN integration for storing media files and for crash reporting. Cloudinary Sendgrid The user can write articles, upload profile picture, display bio in profile, view other user’s profile and their articles. The full source code of the project can be found in this repo → VellXR Initialization Create a Django project and an app for the same. django-admin startproject VellXR VellXR && python manage.py startapp user cd Setup virtualenv and install requirements. virtualenv env

.\env\Scripts\activate - For Windows users env/bin/activate - For Linux/MacOS users

pip install -r requirements.txt source Configure project settings The existing uses production settings. settings.py Create a in same directory to run the project in development mode. local_settings.py DEBUG = SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT = SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER = True False None Coding time ! Create your models in and make cloudinary CDN configurations. VellXR/user/models.py django.db models django.contrib.auth.models User django.utils timezone cloudinary cloudinary.uploader cloudinary.api cloudinary.models CloudinaryField django.template.defaultfilters slugify datetime os

User._meta.get_field( )._unique = User._meta.get_field( )._unique = cloudinary.config( 
  secure= ,
  cloud_name = , 
  api_key = , 
  api_secret = ) user = models.OneToOneField(User,on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    bio = models.CharField(max_length= , blank= )
    portfolio_site = models.URLField(blank= )
    profile_picture = CloudinaryField( , null= , blank= , default= ) self.user.username author = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE) 
    slug = models.SlugField(max_length= )
    title = models.CharField(max_length= ) 
    post_image = CloudinaryField( , blank= , null= , default= )
    content = models.TextField() 
    published_date = models.DateTimeField(default=timezone.now) self.published_date = timezone.now() 
        self.save() self.title super(Post, self).save()
        cur_time = datetime.datetime.now()
        self.slug = % (
            slugify(self.title), cur_time.hour, cur_time.minute, cur_time.second, cur_time.day, cur_time.month, cur_time.year
        )
        super(Post, self).save() from import from import from import import import import from import from import import import 'email' True 'username' True True 'CLOUDINARY_CLOUD_NAME' 'CLOUDINARY_API_KEY' 'CLOUDINARY_API_SECRET' : class UserDetail (models.Model) 50 True True 'image' True True "logo.png" : def __str__ (self) return : class Post (models.Model) 50 50 'image' True True "logo.png" : def publish (self) : def __str__ (self) return : def save (self) '%s-%d%d%d%d%d%d' Replace the environment variables with your Cloudinary , , . CLOUD_NAME API_KEY API_SECRET In register your models. VellXR/user/admin.py django.contrib admin user.models UserDetail user.models Post admin.site.register(UserDetail)
admin.site.register(Post) from import from import from import # Register your models here. Setup urls for the project. django.contrib admin django.urls path django.conf.urls url,include django.conf.urls.static static user views . settings

urlpatterns = [
    path( , admin.site.urls),
    url( ,views.index, name= ),
    url( , views.search, name= ),
    url( , views.user_logout, name= ),
    url( ,views.register, name= ),
    url( ,views.user_login, name= ),
    url( , views.about, name= ),
    url( , views.write, name= ),
    url( , views.user_profile, name= ),
    url( , views.profile_posts, name= ),
    url( , views.profile_posts_detail, name= ),
] + static(settings.STATIC_URL, document_root=settings.STATIC_ROOT) from import from import from import from import from import from import 'admin/' r'^$' 'index' r'^search/(?P<search_query>[-\w.]+)/$' 'search' r'^logout/$' 'logout' r'^register/$' 'register' r'^login/$' 'login' r'^about/$' 'about' r'^write/$' 'write' r'^profile/(?P<username>[-\w.]+)/$' 'profile' r'^profile/(?P<username>[-\w.]+)/posts/$' 'profile_posts' r'^profile/(?P<username>[-\w.]+)/posts/(?P<slug>[-\w.]+)/$' 'profile_posts_detail' Building views Here, views will mainly consist of the following components - index about user_login user_logout register user_profile write profile_posts profile_posts_detail search django.shortcuts render user.forms UserForm, UserDetailForm, PostForm django.contrib.auth authenticate, login, logout django.http HttpResponseRedirect, HttpResponse django.urls reverse django.contrib.auth.decorators login_required cloudinary.forms cl_init_js_callbacks django.utils timezone django.contrib.auth.models User .models UserDetail, Post user_posts_on_home = Post.objects.all().order_by( )[: ] render(request, , { :user_posts_on_home}) render(request, ) logout(request) HttpResponseRedirect(reverse( )) registered = request.method == :
        user_form = UserForm(request.POST)
        user_detail_form = UserDetailForm(request.POST, request.FILES) user_form.is_valid() user_detail_form.is_valid():
            user = user_form.save()
            user.set_password(user.password)
            user.save()
            profile = user_detail_form.save(commit= )
            profile.user = user request.FILES:
                print( )
                profile.profile_picture = request.FILES[ ]
            profile.save()
            registered = :
            print(user_form.errors, user_detail_form.errors) :
        user_form = UserForm()
        user_detail_form = UserDetailForm() render(request, ,
                          { :user_form, :user_detail_form, :registered}) request.method == :
        username = request.POST.get( )
        password = request.POST.get( )
        user = authenticate(username=username, password=password) user: user.is_active:
                login(request,user) HttpResponseRedirect(reverse( )) : HttpResponse( ) :
            print( )
            print( .format(username,password)) HttpResponse( ) : render(request, , {}) written = request.method == :
        post_form = PostForm(request.POST, request.FILES) post_form.is_valid():
            my_post = post_form.save(commit= )
            my_post.author = request.user
            my_post.published_date = timezone.now() request.FILES:
                print( )
                my_post.post_image = request.FILES[ ]
            my_post.save()
            written = :
            print(post_form.errors) :
        post_form = PostForm() render(request, ,
                          { :post_form, :written}) user_username = User.objects.get(username=username)
    user_image = user_username.userdetail.profile_picture
    user_bio = user_username.userdetail.bio
    user_portfolio_site = user_username.userdetail.portfolio_site render(request, , { :user_username, :user_image, :user_bio, :user_portfolio_site,
                                                 }) user_posts = Post.objects.filter(author__username=username).order_by( ) render(request, , { :user_posts}) user_posts_detail = Post.objects.filter(slug=slug)
    cur_user_username = User.objects.get(username=username)
    cur_user_image = cur_user_username.userdetail.profile_picture render(request, , { :user_posts_detail, :cur_user_username, :cur_user_image}) request.method == :
        cur_search_query = search_query
        search_query_users = User.objects.filter(username=search_query)
        search_query_posts = Post.objects.filter(title=search_query) render(request, , { :cur_search_query, :search_query_users, :search_query_posts}) from import from import from import from import from import from import from import from import from import from import : def index (request) '-published_date' 20 return 'user/index.html' 'user_posts_on_home' : def about (request) return 'user/about.html' @login_required : def user_logout (request) return 'index' : def register (request) False if 'POST' if and False if 'profile_picture' in 'found profile picture' 'profile_picture' True else else return 'user/registration.html' 'user_form' 'user_detail_form' 'registered' : def user_login (request) if 'POST' 'username' 'password' if if return 'index' else return "Account not found !" else "Someone tried to login and failed." "They used username: {} and password: {}" return "Invalid login details given" else return 'user/login.html' @login_required : def write (request) False if 'POST' if False if 'post_image' in 'found post image' 'post_image' True else else return 'user/write.html' 'post_form' 'written' : def user_profile (request, username) return 'user/profile.html' 'user_username' 'user_image' 'user_bio' 'user_portfolio_site' : def profile_posts (request, username) '-published_date' return 'user/posts.html' 'user_posts' : def profile_posts_detail (request, username, slug) return 'user/posts_detail.html' 'user_posts_details' 'cur_user_username' 'cur_user_image' : def search (request, search_query) if 'GET' return 'user/search.html' 'cur_search_query' 'search_query_users' 'search_query_posts' Building forms Forms will be of 3 types - UserForm UserDetailForm PostForm django forms user.models UserDetail user.models Post django.contrib.auth.models User django.forms widgets first_name = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={ : }))
    last_name = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={ : }))
    email = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={ : }))
    username = forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput(attrs={ : , : , : }))
    password = forms.CharField(widget=forms.PasswordInput(attrs={ : , : , : })) model = User
        fields = ( , , , , ) bio = forms.CharField(required= , widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={ : }))
    portfolio_site = forms.CharField(required= , widget=forms.URLInput(attrs={ : }))
    profile_picture = forms.ImageField(required= , widget=forms.FileInput(attrs={ : , : , : , : })) model = UserDetail
        fields = ( , , ) title = forms.CharField(widget=forms.TextInput(attrs={ : }))
    post_image = forms.ImageField(required= , widget=forms.FileInput(attrs={ : , : , : , : }))
    content = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea(attrs={ : }), help_text= ) model = Post
        fields = ( , , ) from import from import from import from import from import : class UserForm (forms.ModelForm) 'class' 'form-control text-center' 'class' 'form-control text-center' 'class' 'form-control text-center' 'class' 'form-control text-center' 'type' 'username' 'id' 'exampleInputEmail1' 'class' 'form-control text-center' 'type' 'password' 'id' 'exampleInputPassword1' : class Meta () 'first_name' 'last_name' 'email' 'username' 'password' : class UserDetailForm (forms.ModelForm) False 'class' 'form-control text-center' False 'class' 'form-control text-center' False 'class' 'form-control text-center custom-file custom-file-input btn btn-default btn-file input-group-text' 'id' 'inputGroupFile01' 'aria-describedby' 'inputGroupFileAddon01' 'style' 'text-align: center; vertical-align: center; width: 100%; height: 100%;' : class Meta () 'bio' 'portfolio_site' 'profile_picture' : class PostForm (forms.ModelForm) 'class' 'form-control text-center' False 'class' 'form-control text-center custom-file custom-file-input btn btn-default btn-file input-group-text' 'id' 'inputGroupFile01' 'aria-describedby' 'inputGroupFileAddon01' 'style' 'text-align: center; vertical-align: center; width: 100%; height: 100%;' 'class' 'form-control' 'HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are supported' : class Meta () 'title' 'post_image' 'content' Configuring Sendgrid The config is pretty easy and straightforward. - full name on Sendgrid console ADMIN_FULL_NAME - E-mail ID used to signup on Sendgrid ADMIN_EMAIL_ID - Sendgrid API key SENDGRID_API_KEY - list of users to send e-mail MAILER_LIST - E-mail ID used to signup on Sendgrid DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL - Username on Sendgrid console EMAIL_HOST_USER - Password of Sendgrid account EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD Running the app The app is now ready for development use. Running the following necessary commands will fire up our app for use. python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py collectstatic
python manage.py runserver 80 Your thoughts are valuable for me. Express your views and suggestions in comments and give a clap if you like the project. Previously published at https://medium.com/@prakhargurunani/social-networking-website-in-django-cloudinary-sendgrid-297e6ff525e6

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