The Use of Cloud Firestore For Handling Real-time Data Updates: An Empirical Study of Gamified Online Quiz

The need for technological solutions that can help improve interactivity in online learning environments is increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic. One technological solution that has been proven is the use of gamified online quizzes such as Kahoot!. One of the issues when using existing third-party platforms is related to integration with existing learning platforms. Institutions that have sufficient resources can solve this by developing solutions that are easily integrated with existing learning platforms. This paper discusses how to use database technology that can handle real-time data updates to develop a gamified online quiz system. In this experimental study, UML use cases and sequence diagrams were used to describe the functional requirements and behavior of the system. Further, entity-relationship model was also used to help the database implementation process. Two database technologies, namely Cloud Firestore and CouchDB, were compared to see how they perform in handling real-time data updates and how much they cost. The comparison results show that Cloud Firestore is better in terms of latency and more cost-effective than CouchDB.