<p>What web app architecture works well receiving/sending SMS text messages? By "architecture, I mean specific architecture, not generally, such as MVC.</p>

<p>Background: I'm building a web app that receives queries from/sends answers to cell phones. The app design (and business model) expects to communicate with cell devices via SMS text messages. IOW: There is no MVC web page "view". The cell phone screen is effectively the "view".</p>

This depends on how you will be receiving and sending the SMS messages.
There is a specific Short message protocol (SMPP -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMPP
).
For that you will need an SMPP server.
If you are using a one of the various SMS over HTTP providers (such as Clickatell -
http://www.clickatell.com
), then a web framework such as RoR is fine as both the sending and receiving of SMS messages are actually web requests.
In this case your system view is the HTTP response to the gateway, not the cellphone screen. There are actually quite a few steps involved:
```
Cellphone -> Cellular Network -> Gateway -> Your Service
```
and the reply:
```
Cellphone <- Cellular Network <- Gateway <- Your Service
```