Database and Application+Website

I want to develop a application. Say for example on Phone7/iPhone/android, this application shall get data from a server.

My problem is that I dont know where to start. For the first I got a mac mini that I would love to use as the server, but I got no server operating system on it, does this mean I have to develop my own application that runs on the mac that these mobile apps can connect to?

I would love to use m开发者_JAVA百科y mac as the server, so I later can host my website from this and not the very restricted host I got per day.

I hope you guys can point me in the right direction! :)

Your best bet is to create a web service using a technology stack you are most familiar with. You then consume this web service in ANY client application, whether it be a wpf/windows/mobile app or even another web service.

So for eg.

-MySQL
  -PHP
     -returns xml/json
     -accepts POST data, or go fully RESTful if you please.
-Client consumes or interacts with this web service.

Your implementation needs to suit a design and use case, not the other way around. Come up with a model for what you want to do, and then the next step is to figure out how to do it.

Any computer can act as a server, but there are other things to consider. How will the client reach the server? If your server is sitting on your desk behind a gateway on a dynamic IP, you're already in trouble.

You'd need to write server and client code, and the mobiles you mentioned do things quite differently. That's a pretty daunting task for a beginner.

From your question, I'm assuming you want to run a website/database server with your Mac. Its definitely possible to this. You can install the relevant packages manually if you feel you have the experience, or use "MAMP" to get a leg up. MAMP bundles Apache, MySQL and PHP for Mac OSX, with a more or less point and click install process. There's a premium pro version offered, but the free option is definitely sufficient. Here's the link: http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html