A little iPhone help

So, I'm an iPhone coder. I can make games and UI's, so long as it doesn't involve this: server connection. I'm a bit lost on that.

Oddly enough, I can code some php, C, C++, Objective C, SQL, and just about every technology this will take... I can even make multiplayer games using TCP...

But somehow, this is still bugging me. How exactly do I go about the process of creating a DB, hooking it up to a web service through php (which, by itself, I could do), and then hooking it up to the network code in iPhone?? Say I want to store locations in an app, and then have that DB available for different users of the app, quite common, eg: maphook or similar.

I suppose, I've seen some native code and some ASIHttprequest code (would prefer native), but I'm also somewhat perplexed by this: POST. When the call is made, the username and password are added to the HTML POST msg, but are they encrypted?

I keep seeing tutorials that just say "Add your name and password to the POST message" and I'm like, "Where's the encryption?"

If someone could walk, me through this, I can code it in XCode, setup the database, etc.

I do not want to use Ruby because, as cool as it is, it takes extra time to set up.

Thanks

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