Do I need to write a separate server to interact with the database?

Question

Software design

Immediately I apologize for the clumsy wording of the question, quite green yet.

My task is to write an application (not web) in which clients could exchange messages and view files posted by the administrator (also a client, but as a special type of user). It is also necessary that each client has his own profile, which he can edit.

Actually the main question: how to organize all this business using a database?

On the Internet, there are a lot of examples of connecting to a database from a client application, but all this within one PC and one user.
I would like to understand whether I need to write my own serverto interact with a database that is hosted on a remote PC, or you can simply connect to the database directly from the client application, only so that there are no conflicts when several clients try to log in or change data at the same time.

If the second option is possible, then can I place the database on a regular home PC, given that there can be ~ 1000 clients, or is it better to place the database on some kind of paid hosting?

Please point me in the right direction, I'm completely confused. Thank you.

Answer 1

Hosting: shared or cheap VPS where you host your database.
There is also an API on anything (PHP, JS, Python), with authorization and conflict resolution (or rather, eliminating their cause).
And everything else you need to do from within the application will be covered by libCurl.

Answer 2

There are several approaches.
1. Removal through the service (rest, grpc, soap, etc.) (pluses of reducing the attack area to your service)
2. Removal of the connection to the database also takes place, everything is fine using the normal postgree database, mysql, mssql, oracle, db2
3 .Just pasting into your web view application

Answer 3

If you want to do less of your own and just take some project as a basis, then look on github for projects of bicycle messengers and expand their functionality
. But it can be more difficult to understand someone else's code than to write your own