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I am very new to IOS development.I wonder which language/framework everyone is using to create RESTFUL web services for high traffic, scalable IOS app backend.

The solution requires: 1. Secure Login 2. Restful web services (JSON) 3. High traffic 4. File upload/download 5. Quick search result from large volume database

I am from .NET and MSSQL background. I heard people are using PHP, Java, Python, RoR with IOS webservice development. I understand every language can have pros and cons, just want to know what is prefered in today's trend.

And for database, is NoSQL database a prefered choice than RDBMS for scalable large volume databse? I am checking MongoDB.

Apologies if I am asking wrong questions. I am investigating the technologies for this new project, and any input will be greatly appreciated!


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2 Answers 2

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I have worked in three major projects that all of them have desktop clients, web clients, and mobile clients (Android, iOS). The 3 have completed different server side approach, and all of them make me and the users happy:

Project 1: Server: Delphi + RemObjects Clients: Delphi desktop apps, PHP Web apps, Java applets, Android apps, iOS apps Why Delphi? Because the existent project was already a Delphi multi-tier app, the development team have domain of Delphi platform, ans was easy with RemObjects (or even with the standard DataSnap) to return JSON, SOAP or XML-RPC to be invoked by the clients;

Project 2: Server: PHP Clients: ExtJS Web apps, Android apps, iOS apps Why PHP? The development team was experienced with PHP, the projects was originally a PHP web app with some classes well defined and not coupled with the UI. Some new classes in the server that reused the existing code base, just converting to/from JSON were enough to allow the clients to talk to the server, with minimum effort.

Project 3 (initial development): Server: C# ASP.NET Clients: ASP.NET apps, Android apps, iOS apps Why C#? Again: the development team was experienced with C# and ASP.NET, the projects was originally an ASP.NET app. We are refactoring some app logic into web services that will be consumed for both the ASP.NET app and the clients.

As you see, there is no need to make the team learn something completely new on the server side.

I'd suggest you to keep your development in .NET with MSSQL, taking advantage of your current skills.

If the application traffic grows you can move the server app to an IaaS server (like Amazon AWS EC2) that supports SQLServer, or even better to a PaaS server, which in this case Windows Azure will probably be your best friend.

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well said, thanks Jeferson! I will stick to C#/WCF for my solution, cheers! –  paul1155 May 29 '12 at 23:59
If this helped you, consider up-vote or accept one of the answers. –  Jeferson Oliveira May 30 '12 at 0:08
Was trying to, but got "Vote up need 15 points reputation" ... –  paul1155 May 30 '12 at 5:14
just work out how to accept answer on stackoverflow, I have marked your answer!thanks again! –  paul1155 Jun 20 '12 at 5:23

These are all loaded questions that can't be answered without more information about what you're making, etc. I use a combination of Ruby with Sinatra and DataMapper (and SQLite/PostgreSQL) for most of my projects, but that's my personal preference and probably won't be of much help to you.

Rather than choosing a technology stack based on trends, why don't you just pick something with a good user base for help and go from there?

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Thank you Alan. We are quite new in mobile development, and we have a few web products that need mobile version. In the last few months I have developped an android app with .NET web services. It works but my concern is scalability and performance for high traffic app. And I do want to know what tech are other people using for mobile. Trend does matter when I don't know too much about it :) Thanks again for your input. –  paul1155 May 28 '12 at 1:12

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