I am writing an Android app using the Google Cloud Messaging API and I keep coming across the term “app server”. The past few days I’ve been Googling and searching Stack Overflow on this topic and I have uncovered a fair amount of helpful information.
I am a bit new to all this and I have a very simple question that no article answers: is an application server simply when back-end code exists on a web server in the form of say, a PHP file, that communicates with the database and then sends this queried data to a pervasive device? Or is an application server a completely different architecture altogether?
If so for the latter question: I have web server space I use from 1&1 and my friend’s home-server, can I use part of these as an application server? Any information that can be provided would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Your first thought is correct. If you have a server which can be contacted from your device and the sever runs some code which your Android app uses, then its an App server.