Is the server controlled by you 100% or will it a server on the open internet now or in the future?
Then you should stick to using a database product such as MySQL or PostgresSQL. Given your experience, this shouldn't be up for discussion.
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macOS To SQL or not to SQL, that is my question
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Is the server controlled by you 100% or will it a server on the open internet now or in the future?
Then you should stick to using a database product such as MySQL or PostgresSQL. Given your experience, this shouldn't be up for discussion.
Internal to the company using the software.
Ok, I'm guessing the plan would be to first learn about MySQL and PostgresSQL, and then learn how to integrate into XCode, or would it be better to learn SQL through it's integration with XCode? I know I may be talking out of my ass here, but yeah, I admit I know squat about networking. Where would I learn these subjects?
I'm partial to postgresql, so I'll recommend that. You'll need to get a library like libpq or libpqeasy. This provides a C interface to the operations you need to access the database, including making connections. There may be Objective-C wrapper classes, but I am not familiar with them.
There are plenty of samples out there to learn from. If there isn't a good wrapper available, the most important thing will be managing the result structures you get back from pqexec, otherwise you'll leak memory.
You'll also need to actually learn a small subset of SQL itself. I don't have a good recommendation for this beyond the postgres manual (which is very good). Most important will be insert and update. Deleting comes up, but it's not always appropriate. You'll need to learn the Database definition queries to create your tables and views, but you'll do that rarely enough that you can always have the docs up so you don't have to memorize.
Eventually you'll need to learn joins to pull together meaningful queries over multiple tables, but don't get mixed up with that too early.
Learning about constraints is also important. It sounds like you're first project is production-bound, which is a little scary. I'd normally say this could wait, but not if this data will matter for anyone.
Good luck, Godspeed.
-Lee
Does the company have rules and/or standards about connecting to their system?
Yes, you'll have to learn about the database you are connecting to.
Cocoa coding depends on your connection the server/database. If the connection is straight to the database, then yes, you'll need to learn how to integrate some library into your Cocoa code. If the connection is via a web service API, that is a different tactic.
By "interface" and "wrapper", should I take that to that there would be a C or Objective-C application running on the server to handle the access by the client programs to the database? Forgive me if I'm using horrible lingo here.
I just downloaded the newest postgreSQL manual as a place to start. I may or may not have many questions while reading through it. Are there any samples in specific you would recommend for a network newbie?
It's scary for me too, which is why I plan/expect to go through MANY iterations and rewrites of this program, and using it myself for a long time before I even THINK about going to production.