CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosarchitectureclient-server
torpedo51
torpedo51

Reputation: 332

iOS client server approach

I'm familiar with SOAP and Webservices for peer-to-peer or client/server messaging on other platforms. What is the Apple equivalent for messaging?

I'm trying to put together an application server that will manage a collaborative work environment. It will have an average of 200 and maximum of 1000 mobile clients on a LAN. For example, one Mac and 200 iPhones. I'm planning to use Apple's Enteprise approach to distribute our private (commercial) app to each of our iPhones clients.

The server can push configuration settings to each client. The server will also push small sets of data to the clients. The clients will perform tasks on this data locally, and eventually report back status to the server. The clients can request more data sets from the server. These exchanges can be managed asynchronously.

There is also be a need to have synchronous exchanges for critical processes. This is rare, but it is a requirement.

The data that needs to be exchanged is reasonably small. These client/server processes are time dependent, so performance is critical requirement.

The network won't be shared, but needs to be tightly controlled (and fast). E.g. it can be Bonjour if there is a compelling reason for that.

I'm looking for a recommendation on which components of the Mac/iOS SDKs to leverage. Please leave 3rd party software out of this discussion. I must know what Apple already offers and what gaps exist before considering outside software. Thanks.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1404

Answers (1)

James Paolantonio
James Paolantonio

Reputation: 2194

If you are only going to be using Mac and iOS products then Bonjour is really your best bet. There are a ton of native ways to transmit data in either byte or object forms.

There were a couple great videos from WWDC 2012 showing what the new Xcode can do to create client and server applications. It is under NDA, but you may want to take a look there: https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2012/.

Also you said you did not want third party, any particular reason? Would you use an open source layer on top of Bonjour?

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions