I have a mobile app on android that needs to send small amounts of data (id, lat and long coords) every 30 seconds to be stored in a SQL Server database sitting on an amazon ec2 instance. As an example usage, say that this app has 500 current users all sending data every 30 seconds. For proof of concept I created a windows service in c# running on the database server which listens for connections on a specific tcp port; it threads, and writes the data to the database. Now this works for the 5 users I tested with but I know there are better ways and I especially do not want the insert statements to be done with a program running on the database server. So my question is, what is the correct way to handle repetitive data streams from a large user base that scales in a manageable way. I have read information regarding implementing webservices to do this but I am not sure if that is the correct solution.
Thank you for any information.
Using a web service approach is definitely more scalable than using a Windows service. If your usage grows enough to justify it, it will be also be easier to deploy your web service in a new EC2 instance (or to multiple load-balanced instances) instead of using a windows service which shares resources with your DB instance. It is also much more manageable, especially under AWS, where you can scale your infrastructure with a few clicks.
Also, under a web service (or a web application, if you prefer), it is easier to set up access control and to take other preventive security measures.