Introduction to Offline OData
Prerequisites
- Development environment: Apple iMac, MacBook or MacBook Pro running Xcode 11 or higher
- SAP BTP SDK for iOS: Version 4.0.10
- Tutorials: Manage usage statistics on SAP Mobile Services for development and operations
How the SAP BTP SDK for iOS creates an offline store on the mobile device, how it keeps data in sync, and how data entered locally is flushed back to the originating OData service
You may have noticed that if you launch modern apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn and your E-mail application, they will also work when you are offline. Instead of an empty screen, they show you cached data of the last time they were connected. Needless to say, making an app work in even offline scenario’s increases overall user-experience and may have business benefits.
Not having any data connection in even the wealthiest and most developed cities of the world could lead to the conclusion that the mobile connectivity/bandwidth issue isn’t just going to solve itself on a global level anywhere in the near future. Capacity problems at crowded areas or events, varying coverage and zones with zero reception, unreliable connections (both WiFi and telco) and problems incurred through traveling will likely persist.
This is the reason why many apps are sensitive to the device’s connection state and have offline fallback mechanisms built-in. When in offline mode, some aspects of an app will necessarily stop working, but many others don’t.
Why offline: Business doesn’t always happen where networks exist.