WWDC is just around the corner, and that means it is time to get in your predictions. For a few years now, there has been discussion of a Swift native

Here is what SwiftData will be (…and what it could have been)

submited by
Style Pass
2021-06-04 17:30:09

WWDC is just around the corner, and that means it is time to get in your predictions. For a few years now, there has been discussion of a Swift native data modeling framework, which will do for data what SwiftUI is doing for the user interface. This might be the year. The timing feels right, with SwiftUI reaching a usable level. SwiftData may finally make its appearance. But what will SwiftData look like?

Before I answer that, I sh ould state first that I have no inside information at all. I don’t know if SwiftData even exists. But I do have a long history with data on Apple’s devices. I’ve written books and articles dealing with Core Data, and develop the only third party commercial Core Data synchronization framework currently available. I use Core Data daily, and know it well. And lately, I have started to think about what it would mean for Apple’s data frameworks to follow the same route as SwiftUI, and — perhaps more interestingly — what some blue sky thinking could bring further into the future.

If you’re hoping for something completely new with SwiftData, I don’t think you are going to get it. Apple have invested many years into Core Data, and have a strong team working on it. The framework today is very stable, and much more powerful than most developers realize. You don’t really understand just how powerful Core Data is, until you start developing your own model layer from scratch. Then you start to hit the problems:

Leave a Comment