MeteorJS seems to be a great initiative that allows you building quickly rich web applications with real-time data integration. Still the framework is under development and there is a risk associated to it as: market adoption, few built-in packages, impact on SEO, etc.
It has a very different philosophy compared to other existing JavaScript frameworks like AngularJS, BackboneJS, etc. The server side of a Meteor application works on top of Node and MongoDB. We write both the client and server side of the application using MeteorJS APIs. In future developers will have the choice to use any other database apart from MongoDB. MeteorJS has a multitute in value when it comes to apps that need instant update for all clients at any given point in time.
MeteorJS comes with a set of smart packages. One of the smart packages that monitors the updates from MongoDB via consumption of Mongo Operations Log is mongo-livedata. mongo-livedata in its turn, produces valuable APIs on MongoDB collection cursors such as “observe” and “observeChanges”. Another smart package live data implements DDP – the protocol for communication between clients and the Meteor server. With the browser clients, it is implemented on top of websockets or ajax long-polling.
On of the early adopters seem to be GreenCloud. In about three months they were able to develop a fully functional application, from scratch, which surpassed their successor application it in terms of speed, ease of use and features. They wrote a short blog article about it: MeteorQloud – Building the GreenQloud Dashboard from Scratch.
By Shekhar Gulati: In his attempt to learn 30 Technologies in 30 Days he came across MeteorJS and wrote a down thorough post about his experience. He is developing an epoll application which allows users to post and vote on questions, only if they are singed in with their Twitter account. He goes through the installation, startup and setup process, as well as through what those files are that come along with the MeteorJS initialization.
His approach is to introduce you to the template engine, and scalability. I think its fun to just see how best practice can be applied with MeteorJS. However, this is a tutorial for beginners to intermediate JavaScript developers. You maybe able to turn this into very rich full featured multi-store retail point of sale system. Think of it, the entire time clock and payroll system, sales commission system, inventory management system, cash registers interface and reporting is all handled by your MeteorJS app. Change prices, quantities, deactivate an employee, etc… and it all updates real-time. While I am not sure a retail point of sale system is a best use case scenario, I do think that MeteorJS will certainly help us to move towards the Internet of Things and will create a very rich development environment.
Check out our little todo app here. We just deployed it to see what MeteorJS does in terms of security and usability. Let me know about your experience and leave a comment below. I am always happy about new insights.