AltexSoft Applies Xamarin Best Practices as a Bridge Between iOS and Android

Background

Being a big sports enthusiast, our client noticed that the scoreboard at a venue is often blocked from view, which causes significant inconvenience. He saw a great business opportunity in a product that would allow everyone to have access to the game score, and follow the most significant matches from any place on Earth. The client has addressed AltexSoft with the task to port his Android app, available at that time, to iOS, and implement several changes along the way. From the start of the project, our team concluded that building both apps with the help of Xamarin significantly reduces the future maintenance and upgrade cost. As the product gained more users, the existing backend architecture was unable to keep pace with the growth.

Challenges

Working on the project, AltexSoft team went through the complete development cycle. We had to cooperate closely with the client, finalizing the technical specifications and his requirements, work with the provided UI design, and study the existing software architecture using the provided source code to get a better understanding of the app functionality. The major challenges we had to face along the way were:

Xamarin iOS development and Xamarin Android porting

Incremental database migration

Major program performance upgrades

Value Delivered

Our dedicated effort resulted in a number of benefits for the client:

Better Market Access at a Lower Cost

As the app is now available on both major platforms, it has an improved market availability. The iOS version alone has added over 140% of a pre-release user base within the first 6 months. Moreover, due to the choice of technologies the future upgrades and maintenance will cost half as much: With Xamarin, you need only one development team handling a single codebase, while delivering updates simultaneously for both platforms.

User Retention and Painless Transfer to the New App Version

After a complete redesign of the backend architecture, AltexSoft team had to migrate the existing database to the new Azure server, without causing any inconveniences for existing users. As many of them still used the old version of the Android app, this took a significant effort to keep both of the servers in sync. However, a perfect time has been chosen for a one-time database transfer: Neither was using the app so the process was painless and smooth. Data migration and reuse saved effort, and the cost of additional research.

High System Performance with Increased Capacity

Taking into account the client’s long-term vision, we had to make the product scalable and efficient, regardless of the possible load. As the database grew from 2,000 to 30,000 items, AltexSoft had to implement a full-text search and retrieve data in segments to speed up the client-server interactions. The system performance was tested with up to 300,000 records and showed a tenfold efficiency increase and thus a better user experience.

Approach and Technical Info

Due to its specifics, the project started with a team of two: Software Engineer/Technical Project Lead and QA Engineer. Later, as we started to rework the existing Android app and backend, the team has been enlarged with additional resources: 6 Software Engineers were added to handle Xamarin and server side development. The project technology stack included: Xamarin (iOS, Android), Microsoft.NET, C#, Microsoft Azure, Entity Framework, and ASP.NET. The first version of the iOS app was released within 3 months from the start date of the project. However, it took an additional 6 months to redevelop the Android app and backend infrastructure. Services provided within the project framework: Engineering Services.

Microsoft.NETCrossplatform and Native Mobile