If you use CoreData (and you should) you can get the same effect by using a NSFetchedResultsController. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/CoreDa...

The advantage of using Parse is that it syncs the local store with the store on the server. However, if your server exposes a RESTful API, it isn't too difficult to sync by writing up a bunch of closures using NSURLConnection+BlocksKit.h. https://github.com/zwaldowski/BlocksKit/blob/master/BlocksKi...

Parse's SDK makes the syncing significantly easier. I tried a combination of REST + CoreData and also a locally running version of CouchDB replicating with a CouchDB server. Parse was by far the simplest to implement and comparatively surprisingly fast.

The Parse team has done a great job so far and I'm excited to see what other improvements they make. This little exercise is a good intro to their platform.

> If you use CoreData (and you should)

Can you qualify why you should use CoreData?

Every project I've "rescued" for clients that had CoreData beginnings eventually got ripped out for an easier SQLite/simple entity solution.

Is there a way to export data from Parse? If not, how do you address developer concers about getting locked in to the platform?

You can export all your data through our REST API. We plan to offer a one-click solution soon.

I swear, whenever I start to implement something for my Parse-based app, Parse just goes and adds it to their framework. Stop making my life so easy!

Anyone thought through the advantages of using Parse vs. iCloud for sync? For a multi-platform app, Parse seems to be the way to go. The only disadvantage I can see is that I ( as a service provider ) have to pay the storage costs of parse, while Apple handles the storage costs for iCloud (including collecting expenses from users who opt for more than the free 5gb).

Parse does a lot more than iCloud. You can manage users and share data between users, facebook integration and push notification services.

I believe you can't do Pagination/Ordering just using iCloud?

The UI part is easy if you are using Three20 (while some people might argue :p), the backend part seems very attractive as you don't need to have the knowledge to setup the web server/storage for serving the data, and need to worry about the scalability issue etc.

Would be great if you also provide a CMS for editing the data.

We do. It still has a long way to go but you can edit the data via our data browser.

Feature Suggestion: would be great if they automatically lazy loaded images as well.

* Check out EGOImageLoading https://github.com/enormego/EGOImageLoading

* Or the UIImageView category in AFNetworking https://github.com/AFNetworking/AFNetworking

* Or this https://github.com/anoopr/fully-loaded

* There are many more...

That's straightforward to do yourself. Either roll your own using blocks, or use a standard library such as SDWebImage (which is very easy to install using CocoaPods). But I agree, having it integrated would be even nicer.

i think that might be outside the scope of what parse is trying to provide. 'lazily loading' images is fairly involved...even more so if you want to persist them into a http cache of sorts.

It's like magic. I can just magically sync from server to phone.

:)

James - who do I need to email for corporate accounts & partnerships ;)

enterprise at parse :)