Are there any good tutorials on linking an iPhone app to a database?

Question

I have built an iPhone app that needs to pull data from a server. First I need to figure out what kind of server I will need. I'm a bit familiar with MySQL but was wondering if anyone had better suggestions on a backend. My app will have two tables that need to be populated by data residing on a server. Also, a user can submit data to this database which in turns populates the previously mentioned tables.

If you have any tips or tutorials, code snippets, etc. it would be really appreciated!

*Edit: I should mention this IS a remote database

Answer 1

Well if it's a remote server your thinking about then you should be looking into implementing some kind of service architecture like Web Services over SOAP or REST.

If the data stays on the iPhone than by all means use SQLite as it's fast and lightweight.

I would recommend starting with SQLite and local data first. Then when you have your main program logic, flow and UI complete, replacing the SQLite with Web Service calls.

Answer 2

Your database sounds really simple with just two tables. Perhaps you don't even need a SQL database. Perhaps a Berkeley DB would be sufficient. It has atomic commit, transactions, rollback etc. However you store data as key-value pairs.

However I am not sure if you can use it as a server. You could consider accessing the data through something like remote objects. This is done very easily in Cocoa. You could build a Berkeley DB on your sever that hosts the data as distributed objects that your iPhone app connects to.