Build Systems that Drive Business
30–31 Oct 2018: Training
31 Oct–2 Nov 2018: Tutorials & Conference
London, UK

What changes when we go offline first?

Martin Kleppmann (University of Cambridge)
10:2010:40 Friday, 2 November 2018
Location: King's Suite
Average rating: ***..
(3.73, 15 ratings)

We all know how to build web apps around a central server. However, clients—especially mobile clients—are not always online and thus can’t always reach the server. Increasingly, we want to develop apps in which the user can still get work done while offline and that sync their data the next time an internet connection is available. We call such apps “offline first.”

However, in the offline-first world, there is an issue that is not so often talked about: moving from server centric to offline first deeply changes the programming model. For example, if several users each change data while offline, how do you merge them back together again?

Martin Kleppmann shares recent computer science research that is helping develop the abstractions and APIs for the next generation of applications.

Photo of Martin Kleppmann

Martin Kleppmann

University of Cambridge

Martin Kleppmann is a researcher in distributed systems at the University of Cambridge. Previously, he cofounded and sold two startups and worked on large-scale data infrastructure at internet companies including LinkedIn. Martin is the author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications from O’Reilly.