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Comment by flukus | Hacker News Reader

> Parse was an API as a service. The idea being that you don't need your own servers and parse would provide API, database, push messaging and so on.

I'm still unclear. It's some sort of hosted database+services?

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I'm also confused. "API as a service" sounds to me like "service as a service"... ok, it's a service, but what does it do?

From my understanding, it provided services that you would have to create from scratch in your own infrastructure that would be a significant undertaking. For instance, push notification in iOS is a bit of a nuisance if your app really doesn't rely on a complex server back end, but you would like to still add push notifications. Parse did this portion for you, so you could focus on the product. I could be wrong though, I looked at it a year ago, and my memory isn't what it used to be.

This seems like the best documentation http://parseplatform.github.io/docs/rest/guide/

From my reading it seems like a generic rest service. I suppose like COTS for rest services.

The first iOS app I built used parse for the entire backend. We basically used it as a database in the cloud accessible by multiple clients (it can accommodate fancier uses as well). We didn't really run any custom code on the server side, Parse basically provided access to a shared db across our client instances. It allowed us to build a simple location sharing app in a few hours.

It was basically a CRUD API as a service; simple object storage and retrieval via HTTP, with goodies like validation and nested routes (joins) and such built in.

And if I download the open source code, and run it on my own server, is it a service as a service as whatever-the-opposite-of-a-service is? I'm confused...

You're thinking too small. Support it multi-tenant on a fleet of servers and sell it to customers, now you've got a service-as-a-service-as-a-platform.

> I'm also confused. "API as a service" sounds to me like "service as a service"... ok, it's a service, but what does it do?

perhaps this http://rawrmaan.com/why-parse-failed/ might be a better explanation ?

I would call Parse a "Backend as a Service"[0], akin to Firebase[1]. "API as a Service" is more like Apiary (bought by Oracle) or Apigee (bought by Google).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backend_as_a_service

[1] https://firebase.google.com/docs/

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