iCloud vs. Cloudant

[rockies]

With the update to 5.1, iCloud syncing has returned as an option.

I am waiting to switch back to iCloud syncing because of the iCloud syncing difficulties I experienced previously with TapForms. Currently, I am using Cloudant, which syncs almost instantaneously, but without encryption.

Previous versions of TapForms using iCloud syncing produced significant lags in synchronization among devices.

Has this problem been fixed in version 5.1’s return to iCloud?

I’d be curious to hear if others have switched back to iCloud from Cloudant and if they see an improvement.

[tonyt]

I have switched and so far, its almost instant. NO problems here!

[Brendan]

The sync method in Tap Forms 3.5 / 4.0 is 100% different than what it is in Tap Forms 5.1. Previously Tap Forms wrote files to your iCloud Drive. Now Tap Forms uses Apple’s CloudKit infrastructure to send the individual objects (records, fields, forms, photos, file attachments, etc.) up to Apple’s CloudKit servers as you work on your document. When you make modifications to your document and CloudKit receives the data, CloudKit then sends Apple Push Notifications to your other devices telling them something has changed. When Tap Forms is running on your devices, it sets up a listener to listen for those push notification messages. When a push notification message arrives, Tap Forms then asks CloudKit to send it a list of all the objects that have changed since the last time it synced. That’s what’s happening when you see the “Sync fetching” message in Tap Forms. CloudKit will respond to the request by sending it about 200 objects per response. Tap Forms will start receiving those objects and it will write them to the database. CloudKit will keep sending 200 or so at a time until it’s done. Unfortunately there’s no “we’re going to send you 1000 objects in total” message from CloudKit, so Tap Forms just simply fetches 200 at a time until it’s done without knowing how long that will take. That’s why you’ll see Tap Forms show a counter that goes up to 200 and then resets back to 0 and then does it over and over again. When sending to CloudKit I have a better idea of how many objects are being sent, so you’ll see something like “Sending (123/4567)” until it reaches the end.

Anyway, that’s CloudKit syncing in a nutshell. It’s much much better than the old system. It’s fully automatic. Just set it and forget it. Although I have experienced from time to time sync failures. That’s when the CloudKit servers don’t respond in time. There might be a timeout error or an error saying “error fetching records”, etc. Tap Forms does try again when these things happen, but sometimes it gives up and shows the error to you. Closing and opening the document will get it going again and hopefully this time Apple’s servers will respond more quickly. It also depends on your own Internet connection of course.

Cloudant is really good too and for the initial sync it’s faster than iCloud’s initial sync. But once they’ve both synced each devices, making changes should sync very quickly to the other devices. At least within a minute of when you make the change and usually within 10 seconds or so.

[rockies]

Thank you for the input regarding the use of Cloudant vs. iCloud sync. I’m looking forward to making the move back to iCloud and the use of the encryption services.

[Brendan]

One thing you should make sure you do, despite the instructions on the iCloud sync screen, you should press the Sign Off button on the Cloudant screen before you enable iCloud sync. Just because of a small glitch that’ll make the activity indicator spin forever.

[Author]

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