Where can I host a database for my Mac OS X App?

The sky's the limit. If you are sticking to Apple platforms, CloudKit might be a good option. If the data is not shared between users, then you could use iCloud key-value store. Or if you need cross platform, there are third party cloud providers that provide simple APIs, such as Parse. Or you can roll your own (administer your own VPS and maintain the database and a REST API to access it). Lots of ways to skin that cat depending on your requirements and skill level.

Any resources you can point to me that further explains these concepts?

Apple's programming guides are normally pretty good for the iCloud related topics. Parse has their own tutorials and raywenderlich dot com has tons of tutorials.

If you're just getting started I would recommend skipping the server stuff at first - stub it out (write some code that just pretends to access a server). By the time you need a real implementation there you may have learned more about what you need for the server side.

Yeah I guess, it was pretty overwhelming reading and watching numerous tutorials of multiple topics.

The only foundaton I have regarding how an app communicates with a database was my web development experience where what I do is:

1. Create the site locally

2. Create a database on Xampp's MySQL and have my site's code to connect to the ip address my database is being hosted at (usually 127.0.0.1)

3. When I finish the code I copy all of the files and paste them to a web hosting site

4. Use the web hosting site's database managing feature and upload my database that I exported from my local database

5. Go through the code and just change the database access path of the site to the one being used by the web hosting database

6. Done

If it isn't too much of a hassle, can you possibly list how cocoa apps access the database, kinda how I did, just to know the process.

*IF* your app needs to be cross platform, then the steps you mention would be a subset of the "roll your own" solution. But instead of serving user visible HTML, your "web site" (really just some PHP scripts) would accept POSTed JSON and reply with JSON results using a REST API that you define. Then the client side would have code to format requests and parse the results into application objects.

Or you could just make a few CloudKit calls and let Apple worry about the whole back end (security, scalability, reliability etc.). 🙂

>Any resources you can point to me that further explains?

As noted, cloudkitJS may be your friend. See the docs/ref:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/CloudKitJS/Reference/CloudKitJavaScriptReference/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40015359

Im using Azure through Microsoft BizSpark to get free server space while I am getting my bicycle app Sprocket up and running on Android and iOS

@junkpile Where's a good place to create a post about my need for an iOS Developer? I was sent here by an iOS Evangelist because Bay Area cyclists are asking me to build an iOS client but I cant even find the button to PM an admin in these forums 😝

Forum guidelines discourage posting private info/soliciting.

Google is your friend for resources in your area, but...the devs you'd want to hire are usually busy, so be careful.

And there is no pm feature here. Apple didn't spring for any options when they contracted w/JIVE Software for this package.