# Cloud Firestore

Cloud Firestore is a managed, highly scalable, NoSQL database service. Cloud Firestore automatically handles sharding and replication, providing you with a highly available and durable database that scales automatically to handle your applications' load.

Cloud Firestore has two modes - Datastore Mode, and Native Mode. While both modes are NoSQL databases, there are a lot of difference between them, primarily:

* Native Mode is a real-time database, meaning you can listen to updates in real-time, and the data model is composed of Document and Collection of documents..
* Datastore mode does not have the real-time capability, and the data model is composed of Entity and organized in Kind of entities.

{% hint style="info" %}
Read [Choosing between Native mode and Datastore mode](https://cloud.google.com/datastore/docs/firestore-or-datastore) for more information.
{% endhint %}

For traditional backend applications where real-time data updates is not needed, the Datastore mode is simple to use. For backend applications that wants to adopt reactive programming model, then the Native mode is better suited. 

{% hint style="danger" %}
A single Google Cloud Project can only choose one of the modes. Once the mode chosen, you cannot change the mode. I.e., if you created a project that chose to use the Native mode, then the same project can no longer use the Datastore mode.
{% endhint %}

Learn how to use each of the mode in the following pages.

{% content-ref url="/pages/-M9dZMn1ziyaegs7TJtP" %}
[Datastore Mode](/app-dev/cloud-services/databases/cloud-firestore/datastore-mode.md)
{% endcontent-ref %}


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://spring-gcp.saturnism.me/app-dev/cloud-services/databases/cloud-firestore.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.