Is there a distributed application framework (commercial is okay as well) that supports iPhone / iPad ?
What I’m looking for in the framework:
- Allows me to focus on the application logic
- I don’t have to code “low-level” network programming (I’ve done it too many times that I dont wanna do it again =p)
- Should be actively maintained (popular would be nice)
Basically, I can then develop faster.
We plan to develop a soft real-time TCP/IP client/server application where there are many iPhone/iPad clients (30+) connected to single server over LAN. The server most likely will run Windows (unless the framework does not support it).
I’ve been looking around and I see:
- MonoTouch WCF (still looks quite raw ?)
- RemObjects (Mono + Objective-C)
- Cocoa Distributed Objects
- ZeroC Ice Touch (Objective-C)
- RakNet ( ? included because it mentions iPhone, but will need to use C++)
- Of course, there’s also the option of using the plain old MonoTouch System.Net.Sockets
- Or, CFNetwork (I dont plan to use this one)
I’m still deciding whether to use Objective-C or MonoTouch, but leaning towards MonoTouch since we will get the .NET framework, and not be tied into just the Mac world.
Please feel free to comment if I added anything that’s not related to my question—I’m new to iPhone/iPad world.
We’ve used WCF/Monotouch with great success – there are some areas of the f/work that arent 100% but for most cases you should find working with WCF on monotouch a breeze.
The ability to share all of our data sync, model, tests etc between monodroid and monotouch and wm7 is seriously cool (with some working – this is easilly possible – you’ll need to manage multiple prj files).
Be careful to manage calls to wcf services correctly, keep them to a minimum, keep the archetecture simple. We ended up with a fairly complex dto to minimise the amount of calls to the wcf services to sync the data – this was well worth it as the time needed to sync a device from scratch is now a fraction of what it was.
Using SSL to communicate with the server is a PITA but I think that’s more a case of the way apple have managed it.