September 2019 Summaries

Firebase Summit 2019 introduced updates aimed at simplifying development, testing, engagement, and project management for the platform’s more than two million monthly active apps. New Firebase Extensions offer configurable, open-source packages that automate recurring tasks such as image resizing, email-list additions, and URL shortening, while the expanded Emulator Suite adds tools including Security Rules hot reloading, broader SDK support, Realtime Database-triggered Functions, and improved CI integration. Firebase also launched App Distribution for distributing iOS and Android prerelease builds to testers, expanded Google Analytics, Remote Config, and Firebase Cloud Messaging capabilities to web applications, and enhanced Firebase Predictions with more detailed behavioral targeting controls. Other announcements included newly open-sourced iOS, Android, and web SDKs, expanded React Native Firebase support, general availability of customizable Firebase Roles and Permissions, Test Lab test sharding for faster parallel runs, and a recommendation to migrate Fabric projects before its dashboard sunset on March 31, 2020.

Firebase has doubled the concurrent connection limit for each Realtime Database instance from 100,000 to 200,000, applying immediately to existing and new projects. Applications needing greater capacity can shard data across up to 1,000 database instances, increasing total connection capacity linearly when users or devices interact with isolated data segments, such as independent virtual whiteboard sessions or groups of IoT sensors. The Realtime Database remains suited to workloads involving frequent, small, low-latency operations and may be more cost-effective than Cloud Firestore for high volumes of tiny writes. Cloud Firestore is recommended for many new projects because of its stronger reliability architecture, more advanced queries, global locations, and realtime and offline capabilities, while both services can also be combined, such as using Realtime Database for live collaboration and Firestore for durable storage.

Firebase Crashlytics provides five stability alert types—new fatal and non-fatal issues, regressions, trending or emerging issue digests, and velocity alerts—to help teams identify crashes and prioritize incidents without continuously monitoring the console. New-issue alerts are disabled by default to limit noise, while daily trending digests are enabled by default, regressions highlight closed problems that return in new versions, and customizable velocity alerts identify issues rapidly affecting a significant share of users. Alerts can be delivered through the Firebase console, email, Slack, Jira, or PagerDuty, with integrations supporting either real-time visibility, manual issue creation, or automatic escalation. Recommended practices include using Slack for broad feeds of new issues, Jira for planned work and high-priority regressions or velocity incidents, and PagerDuty primarily for critical velocity alerts, while Cloud Functions can support more specialized workflows.

Firebase Cloud Messaging expanded notification capabilities on iOS and Android by adding support for rich media images and introducing new Android-specific parameters for greater presentation and behavior control. Developers can add images through the Firebase console or HTTP v1 API using public URLs, with the SDK downloading and attaching the media when notifications arrive; Android requires no additional setup, while iOS 10 and later requires a Notification Service Extension using the Firebase Messaging ExtensionHelper API and can also support videos and GIFs. If media cannot be retrieved within available network or processing constraints, the notification is displayed without it. Android’s added parameters enable developers to customize timestamps, sounds, vibration patterns, LED lights, priority, lock-screen visibility, local-only delivery, persistence, and badge counts, helping notifications better reflect event timing, urgency, branding, privacy needs, and unread-item totals.