Web service platform for communicating with android app

Question

I want to create a very simple rest-like web service to be used by an android application. The web service just needs to offer a way to add user entries to a simple database and retrieve other users' entries.

What would you recommend as a platform to accomplish this?

I was thinking google app engine might be a good way to get this going without worrying about hosting but asp.net mvc or django are other possibilities.

Answer 1

I know this isn't a direct answer but I would shy away from any sort of offical XML-based web services. I've found that JSON is far less verbose and generally leads to faster response times as opposed to full blown SOAP messages. I would urge you to evaluate JSON as your "transport" mechanism.