How & where to set up DB Server and communicate with iPhone

Question

I'm working on iPhone app that will let users upload/download photos to/from a DB server along with some data associated with each photo.

While I do have experience with iPhone programing, I do not have much experience with DB and server side programing.

Does anyone have any tips on what would be the easiest way to set up DB server and handle requests and responses coming from the iPhone. This server may be potentially required to handle large amount of traffic and preserve data integrity. Several iPhone users might be attempting to upload and modify data associated with each photo at the same time.

I'm thinking of opening a hosted server account so I don't have to purchase hardware and run it from home. Any tips on a company that provides quality and affordable server and DB hosting would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

If you know some Python or Java, you could take a look at Google AppEngine.

It is designed to scale and the entry costs are very low (i.e. free).

You do not have to worry about any infrastructure hosting as it is all provided for you.

The only catch is that it is:

• Harder to get data out of the platform if you decided to move off it to another system
• Does not support push notifications (However there are a lot of push notification providers out there you can hire)