I have been doing quite a bit of research into Azure's various offerings and what they can do, however, it is quite hard to figure out how they might fit together. I have set up a Mobile Service to act as my mobile app's back-end, managing push notifications and data storage etc. This populates a SQL database I have provisioned, all good so far. However, I would now like to display this data in a dashboard type web app. Do I create a private API and host it on another Azure App Service and call it from a separate web app which populates a dashboard, or populate the dashboard directly by querying the SQL database? Not sure of the security implications of either set up, or implementation issues?
Azure App Service can combine both mobile and web components. You didn't mention the preferred language, but ASP.NET (MVC5) and Node.js are supported for the mobile component.
If you have not started using the Mobile Service in production, add the Mobile Apps SDK to your website, update the client SDK to point to the Mobile Apps SDK and just have one site.
Refs for the Server SDKs:
* node
* ASP.NET
Your best bet here is probably to create an empty Web App Service (Website) and have the Mobile Service populate the data on this website, in order to visualize it.
So keep the Mobile Service you have now, and connect it to a new website.
Related
I'm planning a project in which I have a windows service installed in on premise machines (about one hundred of them) which should keep in sync an online azure SQL db with the on premise ones (MS access, third party). That sync happens by calling a Web API.
I then have to build a mobile app which will be used by ~3k users that will access the synced data with Azure mobile app backend.
As for now I've started building a single mobile app backend project which serves both mobile app requests, and webapi2 requests used to sync data.
Furthermore I'll need to add queue/topic section to send realtime notifications from the app to on premise services.
My concern is if is it good practice to keep both "mobile app" and webapi2 in the same project, or should I separate them.
Any suggestion will be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance!
You should, separate them. Based on your description, you should use the microservices architecture, you can read more about it in the links below.
Azure specific:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/guide/architecture-styles/microservices
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture/microservices/
In general:
https://microservices.io/patterns/microservices.html
I have reading about the new Azure offerings and trying to figure out what is what. The documentation I have been finding all over seems to have more information about the frameworks that are not valid anymore like this one here. Most of what they talk about at 4.8, 5.23, 12.13 into the video are no longer valid.
So far what I understand is that Mobile Services was offered in the past. That will soon be discontinued and App Services will take over. App Services are the top level services that contain Api Apps, Mobile Apps and Web Apps. Is this correct?
I am confused as to why we have Api Apps and Mobile Apps. Don't they do the same thing? And now that we have Web Apps in addition, are they only limited to UI related applications? The only simple thing to understand and one that has no similar other offering is the Logic app. This seems to be something that can only be done on the Azure portal. Visual Studio has no project template for it. Is there something that needs to be installed for creating logic apps in my visual studio only?
Also, in Visual Studio 2015 what is the difference between the Asp.Net Web Application project template under the WEB node and the CLOUD node? They both seem to be holding the same templates within.
Why do we have Azure Mobile App and Azure Mobile Service right under the Cloud node like here below..
..and also after selecting Asp.Net Web Application
On the face of it, both look the same. Are there any subtle differences that one needs to know about?
Also, why are all these options also not available for Asp.Net 5 templates? With all the changes happening is it a good idea to put apps developed under the latest versions to production?
Thanks for any pointers.
Azure Mobile Apps are the next version of Azure Mobile Services. Azure Mobile Services has been deprecated, and you can't provision it on new subscriptions. Mobile Apps has a lot more features over Mobile Services. To learn more, see I use Mobile Services, how does App Service help?.
Mobile Apps, Web Apps, and API Apps are all essentially the same thing, they just have some extra features for building particular solutions. You publish each of them to an App Service Plan, which is the actual underlying VM that hosts your service.
Once you've provisioned one of these app types, you can publish a Web API to it, regardless of what app type it is. For instance, you can publish your API to a Web App or Mobile App. Once you've picked a particular app type, you aren't locked in, you will just see a slightly different UI in the Azure Portal.
Mobile Apps also have a Mobile Server SDK for Node.js or .NET. The .NET server SDK is an extension of ASP.NET Web API. It doesn't yet support ASP.NET 5, mainly because there is a dependency on the OData library, which doesn't yet support ASP.NET 5. However, Mobile Apps is under active development and will support ASP.NET 5. Unfortunately, we don't have a timeline to share, mainly because not all the dependencies are complete.
For Mobile Apps in particular, you get the features of client SDKs that support authentication, offline sync, and push notifications. The easiest way to learn about the offering is to follow the quickstart guide: Create a Windows app on App Service.
You can learn all about the SDK and try them out, even without an Azure Account. Here's documentation about the .NET server SDK: Work with the .NET backend server SDK for Azure Mobile Apps.
API apps have a few extra features like creating a metadata endpoint for you automatically, which you can then use to generate client library using Visual Studio.
Currently, only Web Apps and Mobile Apps have a demo experience available at Try App Service, but you can see the API experience if you use a Microsoft Account to sign in, and then manage the app in the Azure Portal. You will see all of the API app and Mobile App options in the portal.
Note that Web and Worker roles are part of Cloud Services, and are a totally separate service. To learn about the difference between these, see Azure App Service, Virtual Machines, Service Fabric, and Cloud Services comparison.
I just describe what is the difference between Azure App Service, Mobile Apps and Api Apps, hope it helps:
Web and Mobile Apps o Mobile Apps offer a mobile application development platform with a rich set of capabilities. Based on Azure Mobile Services, Mobile Apps provide developers with a comprehensive set of client SDKs including Windows, iOS and Android as well as multi-platform environments such as Xamarin and Cordova. With Mobile Apps, you can easily send push notifications to your app, add login, and store data in the cloud with offline sync to any mobile client.
With API Apps, you can select from a rich library of existing on-premises and cloud APIs as well as contribute their own APIs easily for public or private use by Logic, Web, and Mobile apps in Azure App Service.
Azure app service, is a solution for creating web and mobile apps, is a cloud services that unifies everything you need to quickly and easily create enterprise apps that run on any platform or any device.
Azure app service is composed of: Web Apps, Logic Apps, Mobile Apps and API Apps
There is no longer API Apps in Azure, there is now only Web Apps.
Can anyone please point out any benefits of using Azure Mobile services vs using a plain Azure app service / clean web api? For a starter / project type for a backend mobile solution.
I have somewhat mixed feelings on why I would want to use Azure Mobile Services.
As far as I see on Azure Mobile services you have an easier way of authenticating, you can use the notifcations hub more easily
and you have the different "built-in" ways of handling data (table storage etc).
Usually you would want some custom logics, user registration and handling when users register to your backend and you would like a more solid way of handling
and storing the data not privided by the OOTB datastorage.
You might also have another preference than using the /Table/ odata-endpoint you get with it or end up doing lots of logics to make your DAO's return data in properly for the OData endpoints.
All these things; IMO makes it more difficult to make the API/backend clean when using Azure Mobile services rather than a simple Web API with OData endpoints and swagger documentet API that can be used in a mobile-app just as easy.
Implementing / handling authentication and notifications ++ in Web Api ain't that diffucult nor time consuming.
So my problem Azure Mobile services is that it tends to fine for dev / prototyping and testing, but it might get really messy really fast when developing a proper backend.
Any thoughts and reasons why one should choose one instead of the other?
Think of Azure Mobile Services as V1 and App Service/Mobile App as V2. While Microsoft hasn't announced that Mobile Services will be phased out in the near future, if you start a new project, you should definitively look at App Service.
due to the fact that many people are confused about wether to take Web API or Web App or something different. They are going to put it all under one name. The underlying technology will be the same "i think".
But now you'll have in your portal the opportunity to add mobile push notifications, or add your swagger api definitions.
So when you're goint to stick with App Services you're not going to limit yourself.
Even when you're going to take Web Api you'll get all the functions as if you would take an App Service (if i'm correct).
*Edit: I looked it up in the portal. As I said, my old Web App Projects have the same settings as Web Api projects. So you don't need to decide anymore which kind of project you're taking. You get all the benefits out of the App Service.
I've been reading a few tutorials now on deploying Web Apps and API Apps to Azure. However, I am still a little unsure as to why you would use one over another.
I can create a new .NET solution with API controllers and deploy this as a Web App, so why would I specifically require an API App? Are these optimized specifically for ASP.NET Web API, where as Web Apps are for delivering HTML?
Updating the answer to current state of Azure,
App Services now replaces all Mobile, Api and Web Apps flavors as a single app framework with all the functionality rolled over to make things more accessible across application types. Currently all of Web, Mobile and Api Apps are collectively called App Services. We still offer customer to be able to create a Mobile App and a Web App in the gallery but that is basically resolve into an App Service App.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-api-apps-why-best-platform/
Features for Mobile work for Web App as well such as Easy Tables and Easy API. And features for API apps like API Cors and API definitions now work on web apps as well. A customer can host a single web app to act as any mobile service or an api with all the features offered through the app services.
We also have a new service in preview particularly targeting API Apps by offering a management experience for your APIs, Basically you can control the generate try API pages, gather execution analytics, throttle and much more. Check out the feature blog to learn more about the Azure API Management Features. And yes you can host the APIs as a App Service App and hook things up with API Management.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/api-management-get-started/
There was a point in time when there were differences between the different app service types, but that is no longer true. The documentation now states:
The only difference between the three app types (API, web, mobile) is the name and icon used for them in the Azure portal.
So it no longer matters which app service type you choose to deploy to (unless you care what the icon looks like).
UPDATE
Function apps are now the exception. Creating a function app changes the user interface in the portal. The underlying web app, however, is no different. Setting an app setting named FUNCTIONS_EXTENSION_VERSION = ~1 turns any web app into a function app (minus the user interface in the portal).
There are many minor difference between Web API and API Apps, but the very notable and key differences are
Native Swagger implementation - When you create API App in Visual studio, swagger reference comes by default. Swagger provide very developer friendly features for API consumers to Interact with your API thru Swagger UI. Also Swagger based API's provides client SDK generation (both .Net based client and Javascript based client) which makes easy to call API's just like regular method call.
Note: Swagger implementation on regular Web API is possible manually.
Ability to publish your API Apps into Azure Market Place. Azure Market Place is the public repository for all API Apps that can be consumed freely or by charge.
this 15 minute video from Channel 9 gives an excellent overview about Api Apps.
To supplement Greg's answer, Here's an even more recent article describing the differences.
To sum up:
"The key features of API Apps – authentication, CORS and API metadata – have moved directly into App Service. With this change, the features are available across Web, Mobile and API Apps. In fact, all three share the same Microsoft.Web/sites resource type in Resource Manager."
And here's another important note:
"If your API is already deployed as a Web App or Mobile App, you do not have to redeploy your app to take advantage of the new features."
This can depend on what you are trying to do, but you would use a Web API when you are creating a service. ASP.Net Web API is a framework for building HTTP services that can be consumed by a broad range of clients. This allows you to build it not only for a web app, but have it open to connect to Android apps, IOS apps, web apps, Windows 8 apps, WPF apps etc..
So if you need a Web Service but you don't need SOAP then you can use Web API.
Here my comments:
API app:
Used for specific functionallity. Triggering that functionality from an URL.
Can be used to use with GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.
Can receive parameters at BODY (Json).
Response with valid status code (fail, sucess.)
Web APP: An application deployed with multiple functionallity, for example
a catalog for create, update and delete customers or to create a complete ERP.
Function APP: Is very similar to API app,
Used for specific functionallity. Triggering that functionality from an URL.
Can be used to use with GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.
Can receive parameters at BODY (Json).
Response with valid status code (fail, sucess.)
Actually you can deploy your aspnet webapi on Azure WebApp and a self host on Worker Roles.
On WebApp (former Azure websites), it will be deployed on IIS, so you can take advantage of IIS features.
I have developed an MVC5 web application which uses Code First Migrations to build out the database. Now I am attempting to develop a mobile app (using PhoneGap if that matters) that exists as a native option to access the data of the application. However, I am having trouble finding a way for the databases to work nicely together.
Ideally, I'd like to use the same database schema entirely, and just have the application and the mobile app point to it. The database is hosted on Windows Azure. The issue I'm having is that with Azure, the standard way of handling databases with mobile apps is to use an Azure Mobile Service. However, when that service creates a database, it creates its own schema named after the service, whereas the web application uses the dbo schema. So the Users table might exist in dbo.Users for the web app, but in myAppName.Users for the Mobile Service.
I've already explored this solution, which seems to mirror my problem. However, there is an additional issue. The .NET MVC5 Authentication services use dbo as the default schema and there seems to be no way to change that.
Bottom line, if I use the default schema, the mobile app cannot access the database, but if I move the tables to the Mobile Services schema, the Login/Authentication fails because the tables don't exist in the default schema anymore.
Am I missing something here? It seems like it should be a fairly common task to have a web app and mobile app accessing the same database, but I've been investigating this for days without finding a solution.
Thanks for any help you can provide.
The standard way of using a database for mobile apps in Azure is not Azure Mobile Services. I mean, I would not call it standard but just one of the options.
When Azure Mobile Services creates a database it does not create the database with its own schema. Azure Mobile Services does not have a predefined schema. You can define your own schema. The only predefined logic is the addition of the azure mobile services tenant name as a prefix to all table names. This is done to help you host multiple azure mobile service accounts in a single database. You can override this logic if you write the app in .NET. I'm not sure if that's possible if you roll a JavaScript based Azure Mobile Services account.
My suggestion to you would be to roll your own ASP.NET Web API project and host it in Azure. You can host in Azure Web Sites or Cloud Services according to your requirements. Once you have your own APIs running in Azure you should have no problem accessing the APIs from a web site or mobile app.
Hope this helps.