IS GCM A CLOUD ENDPOINT OR SEPARATE ENTITY?

Question

I am new to android development,I am working on push notification app now and trying to get overview of concepts about GCM and got stuck with one of the concept about use of "endpoint".

I am going through below google developer link:

https://developers.google.com/eclipse/docs/endpoints-addgcm

they have given something like this

Google Cloud Messaging (GCM)allows your Cloud Endpoints to send notifications to registered Android devices whenever the state of a resource changes. For example, suppose a user uses a Note application from 2 devices: Device A and Device B. If the user is adding a note from Device A. Google Cloud Messaging can be used in the Cloud Endpoint for the insert operation to ping Device B to indicate that a note has been added.

my questions are

1>> Is GCM itself an endpoint?or it is a separate entity?

2>> how to interact with 3rd party app server without using endpoint for server and client?

Thanks in Advance!

Answer 1

GCM and Cloud Endpoints are separate and unrelated Google services (though one possible source of confusion is that the term 'endpoint' is often also used in more generic ways).

Endpoints is a service for creating public API's for GAE app's. It can make it easier to create the API's that will allow your clients to communicate with your GAE app, particularly if those clients are iOS, Android, or Web apps (the supported client types), and if you want to use OAuth2 authentication for the apps or their users.

GCM is for waking up, and pushing data to, your apps on those same platforms. It is true that your server app will probably use both GCM and Endpoints, they are separate and unrelated.