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2nd Week: Firebase and Design Choice

On this week, we focus on discussing and fine-tuning our proposal for the first sprint in week 7. We first look at different possible back-end database for our app. When deciding between a SQL or NoSQL database, we looked at the differences between scalability, data storage model, and database schema. Looking deeper into this, and listen to Dr. Stonedahl recommendation of Firebase, we concluded that it is the most fitting choice for its inherent compatibility with Android, cross-platform potential, scalability, and tutorial/resources availability. However, since all of our members have no experience with a NoSQL database, we think there might be a learning curve to get used to.

About our design choice, we gathered feedback from our cross-group discussion from last week, as well as brainstorming about the difficulty of different functions of LocalHobby. With the 2-3 weeks timeline in mind, we decided to take some functions out of our original proposal, namely the nested tree design of the hobbies' storage and the local group chat feed. We think that these functions are great stretch goals, but might not be possible to implement in our first demo version. Listed our remaining functions by the difficulty to implement, we have a rough timeline in mind to follow in the next few weeks.

For our actual coding, we created a working project on Android Studio and successfully connect it to our assigned group repository on Github. We also connected the app to a Firebase project on our shared Augustana email account. Lastly, although not complete, we have working simple sign-in, sign-up, and sign-off for accounts using email and password. 

<INSERT SCREENSHOT OF WORKING AUTHENTICATION>

Looking toward next week, we want to finish the authentication process, including saving user extra information, profile picture, and list of hobbies. We also looking at more resources about GPS and messenger to employ to our nearby user search and chat function.

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