Iphone & Web App synch

Question

I am trying to build an Iphone App client for our CRM solution so our sales people would be able to access the information available in our CRM through an Iphone App.

I am trying to find out what is the recommended approach to architect the application when it comes to the database. I am not sure where should the data reside, should I save a subset of the data on the iPhone, or should I just rely on webservices and pull the information I need from the database whenever I need it. Also, is there any best practices or frameworks to build such applications on the Iphone.

Answer 1

The "best" solution from a data synchronization standpoint is work directly with the web based database, the "best" solution from a user experience standpoint is probably not that, due to latency passing data back and forth from the server.

If you do not have experience doing iPhone apps & you have no desire to learn Objective-C & would like to leverage web development skills I recommend a combination of phonegap + jqTouch.

Hope I helped.

Answer 2

Is your CRM based on Rails? You might find ObjectiveReference handy. It's an Objective-C interface into ActiveResources on a RoR site:

http://iphoneonrails.com