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I am in need of some help/ advice on Core Data/ communicating with the device.

My business is pretty much new to developing Apps etc, but are hoping to get the ball rolling fairly quickly.

The two main problems we are having are:

  1. Communication to and from the device. We don't have any databases etc sitting on our servers, and have been only able to send receive data via FTP. Which works to a certain extent, but need a better, more secure way of doing this (again without the use of databases on servers)

  2. Storing/ handling data - we have been sending the device data via FTP and storing that in a NSString and breaking that down to form a tableView etc. Our current aim is to have an app where companys can see their customers, account codes, balances, invoices, stock, and so on. But are struggling woth how to do this properly. I have been suggested Core Data, but am facing some steep learning curves.

Are there any good tutorials for this out there, or good books i should be reading, anything to help us get going? may even go as far as paying for someone to come sit with us for some time to help us...

anyway, i know this is asking alot, but any help would be much appreciated.

GFish

Sam Parrish
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  • Clarification: Do need to communicate with a server or do you need to have the user move individual files from a mac to the iOS device? – TechZen Jun 27 '11 at 12:42
  • The user just needs to be able to download the data. they wont be able to update that data, but the device will send files back with requests in (ie login request) – Sam Parrish Jun 27 '11 at 12:52

1 Answers1

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If you don't have a server side DB then FTP is really your only solution. Of course, you can hide all the FTP stuff from the user and just present them with a list of files to download and open.

You will download the file to either the app's Document or Library folder depending on whether the user will ever need to access or move the file directly. If the user will interact directly, download to Documents. If not, then Library.

Core Data is always the best choice for someone skilled at Core Data. Core Data is not just a persistence API but is actually primarily a data modeling/simulation API used to create the entire model layer of a Model-View-Controller design app (which the Apple API uses.) It makes it trivial to create complex data models that interface smoothly with UI. So, if you climb the learning curve, it is almost always the best option for the Apple API.

Meanwhile, back in the real-world, you have constraints of existing skill sets and time-to-ship. See this previous answer of mine for a breakdown of when to use either collections-to-plist, raw sql or Core Data.

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