Rich Siegel: Our Travails With iCloud Sync

Detailed, thoughtful piece by Rich Siegel of Bare Bones Software:

Core Data syncing: This is where the rubber meets the road for database-backed applications. Core Data is the application-level database framework supplied by OS X and iOS that provides the means for applications to store items, and data about those items, in a single database. Yojimbo, our product, was one of the very first to ship using Core Data storage — we’ve used it since 2006, and it works great for storing data locally in the way that the product needs it to. Syncing database changes with iCloud, however, is a very complicated and difficult job for Core Data.

That’s really the heart of it. Core Data really does “just work” for local storage, both on OS X and iOS, but that’s not the case with Core Data and iCloud.

★ Sunday, 31 March 2013