I need to connect to a middle tier (think Azure) between both my Windows store app and WP8 app. Windows Azure Mobile Services has been proffered as a/the solution.
But am I reading too much into the name "...MOBILES Services" (as one of the pieces is not a mobile app, but runs on desktops, laptops AND tablets)?
In my case, am I better off with Azure Cloud Services as opposed to Windows Azure Mobile Services?
Windows Azure Mobile Services is a fast, easy way to get a back-end in the cloud for your mobile apps and Windows 8 apps (it's fine if your Windows 8 apps aren't necessarily targeting mobile devices). It includes the things most commonly needed in a back-end, such as authentication, database storage, and push notifications. There's no server-side development needed here, you just request the back-end and moments later it's ready to use; however, if you do want server-side logic you can add it in the form of JavaScript scripts.
Alternatively, you could build your own back end in the cloud using a combination of Windows Azure Cloud Services such as the Compute, Storage, and SQL Database services. You have access to more features at this level, but you also are doing your own development. You can write server-side logic in C#, VB.NET, PHP, Java, Python, etc. as you prefer.
Which should you use?
If Windows Azure Mobile Services meets your needs, and you'd rather focus on your mobile app than learning anything cloud-specific, that's likely the best path for you.
If you're conversant with the Windows Azure platform, and need features different from what WAMS provides, that suggests creating your own back end with Cloud Services.
If you're not sure which way to go, I suggest experimenting first with WAMS since it is quick and painless to get started.
Azure mobile services is designed to get you up and going with storing data, push notifications and authentication whichever of those components you might need.
It abstracts the need of creating a data access layer and a web/wcf service to access it from your applications; it's simply there to boilerplate as much functionality off the bat.
This however does not mean that it is only for mobile applications, behind it all is a normal SQL Azure database and an API that you can use from any .NET based application.
I would reason that if you need more than basic CRUD operations and won't be using authentication and push notifications, I would roll my own set of APIs and DAL and use cloud services instead.
If you need a flexible schema, boilerplate data access and want to use some of the other mobile services, it would suit you quite well.
Here is a link to getting going with mobile services from a non Windows8 or WP - ASP application : link
Related
What is the difference between azure API-apps,logic-apps,web-apps and azure functions? And what difference does it make for developer?
Logic Apps:
Logic Apps provide a way to simplify and implement scalable integrations and workflows in the cloud. It provides a visual designer to model and automate your process as a series of steps known as a workflow. There are many connectors across the cloud and on-premises to quickly integrate across services and protocols. A logic app begins with a trigger (like 'When an account is added to Dynamics CRM') and after firing can begin many combinations actions, conversions, and condition logic.
Api Apps:
API apps in Azure App Service offer features that make it easier to develop, host, and consume APIs in the cloud and on-premises. With API apps you get enterprise grade security, simple access control, hybrid connectivity, automatic SDK generation, and seamless integration with Logic Apps.
Web Apps:
App Service Web Apps is a fully managed compute platform that is optimized for hosting websites and web applications. This platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering of Microsoft Azure lets you focus on your business logic while Azure takes care of the infrastructure to run and scale your apps.
Functions:
Azure Functions is a solution for easily running small pieces of code, or "functions," in the cloud. You can write just the code you need for the problem at hand, without worrying about a whole application or the infrastructure to run it. Functions can make development even more productive, and you can use your development language of choice, such as C#, F#, Node.js, Python or PHP. Pay only for the time your code runs and trust Azure to scale as needed. Azure Functions lets you develop serverless applications on Microsoft Azure.
Api apps and Web apps are pretty much the same deal. Logic Apps and Functions are the same in a sense that they allow you to do something as a response to event or on a schedule, but Functions are a way to run code (or existing app) and Logic Apps are more like a workflow constructor, where you take existing actions and chain them (so no coding, or almost no)
ps. You can easily find documentation for those online to get a broader understanding
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.
We have built a simple mobile app that connects to ASP.net Web-API 2.
We would like to use Microsoft client SDK for it's offline sync support.
Now that Azure Mobile Apps support custom authentication we could actually take the leap.
I want to know out if the offline sync SDK absolutely requires us to use Azure Mobile App or Azure Mobile Services.
Microsoft documentation is full of how-to guides but does not explain what happens under the hood. The best I could understand, both are just OData rest API's and swagger for documentation.
Can the Azure Mobile Client SDK work with API server created on top of ordinary ASP Web-App, outside Azure?
What is it about the Azure Mobile App that makes the magic happen?
Vladmir,
On top of OData, in order to support features like soft delete, offline sync and others, the Azure Mobile Client SDK expects the server to implement a certain protocol. So although the answer to your question:
[does the] sync SDK absolutely requires us to use Azure Mobile App?
... is no, and in theory, you could implement your own API, but I would recommend against doing so, since (among other reasons) even if you manage to implement the expected conventions and behaviors, this will become a maintenance challenge down the road if you need to upgrade the client SDK to take advantage of bug fixes and/or new features.
The good news is that with the latest release of the Azure Mobile Apps server SDK, adding mobile capabilities to an existing ASP.NET Web API application is trivial, and you should be able to enable the scenarios you're looking for simply by adding the appropriate Table controllers. So you can just enhance your existing application and not have to develop and maintain the Azure Mobile Apps specific logic yourself.
About your last question, since both, the client and the server SDK are both open source and developed in the open, you can look at what what makes the magic happen here:
https://github.com/Azure/azure-mobile-apps-net-server
https://github.com/Azure/azure-mobile-apps-net-client
I hope this helps!
The answer for your first question: Yes the SDK can be used in any Server API you have since it will be your entry point to work with Azure Mobile Services.
The Azure Mobile app creates a mobile services instance which has push notifications and SQL tables to store all messages you would like to send with the capability to customize the message as needed. Also it creates a notifications hub instance under the hood to manage notifications for all mobile platforms. Azure mobile apps provide offline capabilities through native sync services between db on your devices and the server when connectivity is present.
Feel free to ask more questions to have a full understanding on How mobile apps works.
Hope this helps.
I have a WebAPI back-end for a mobile, and want to host it in Azure.
I am having a hard time figuring out the real differences between AMS and Websites.
All the articles I read about the subject talks about changes and benefits in general, and I want to understand specifically which new features AMS provides, and the benefits of hosting in AMS.
Authentication
In AMS I see the "IDENTITY" tab in azure portal. From what I understand, those 3rd party configs allow me to authenticate my users easily with google,FB etc. But this is just making the process more convenient and configurable via UI. In Websites, I can achieve the same functionality pretty easily using code from ASPNet.Identity and OWIN libraris.
Push Notifications
Again looking at AMS in the "PUSH" tab, I can see two mechanisms. The Notification Hub and 3rd party section.
The Notification Hub is nothing special to AMS, and I can get the exact same functionality when hosting in Websites.
The 3rd party section allows me to configure credentials to push services from Apple and Google (APNS,GCM...) and together with libraries in AMS namespace I can easily write code to communicate with those services.
But When hosting in Websites, in my back-end I can use open source libraries. For example, Moon-APNS to talk to APNS.
Scale
As far as I understand, both Websites and AMS allows the same scale functionality (One calls it Units and the other Instances).
Are there any big differences I missed?
Are any of the claims I made are incorrect?
It would be great if anyone could shed some light on the matter, specifically addressing all the 3 issues (Auth,Push,Scale).
That's a question I often get when I present Mobile Services at user group events.
For a .NET developer, there's nothing really special about Mobile Services since everything it offers, you can do it with a Website.
Mobile Services really shines for non .NET developers since you can have a complete mobile backend by writing scripts running on Node and Mobile Services abstract all the database and REST complexity.
I will likely get downvoted since I'll express a personal opinion but anyways: I see no obvious reasons for using Mobile Services if you're coding a .NET backend.
I think you are exactly the target customer for Azure Mobile Apps. You will get all of the power of having your own Azure Website (now rebranded as Azure Web App), with the additional convenience and client libraries of Mobile Services.
One feature of the client library that you may not have noticed is the cross-platform offline data sync capability. That's usually hard to build on your own, and we have an implementation that's conceptually consistent across all client platforms. (Plus, if you use Xamarin, you can share code between your client implementations.)
To be clear: Azure Mobile Services is NOT deprecated, and will not be until long after GA (general availability) of Azure Mobile Apps. Azure Mobile Apps is currently in preview.
The other big benefit of Mobile Services that you haven't mentioned is the client libraries for Android, iOS, Xamarin, and Cordova. If you already have a REST client library in your app and don't need to worry about multiple client platforms, then Azure Web Sites sound like a good way for you to go.
AMS by itself is built on top of Azure Websites. So you can actually implement everything in an Azure website that is available in AMS.
However, the good thing about AMS is that it allows you to quickly build the backend for a mobile app with CRUD operations, authentication/authorization and also provides client side libraries for different type of clients e.g., HTML, C#, etc. so we don't have to manually make the HTTP calls.
If you have need to implement the above functionality in Web API, it is quite an effort. Isn't it?
I've recently been asked to redevelop an .Net 2.0 WinForms application with a back end SQL Server Express DB.
One of the requirements is to allow remote users access to the application, so I've been considering hosted options to avoid VPN setup. The data is not sensitive and does not fall under data protection act, so a basic security approach for the web will cover me.
I like the idea of using Azure for a few reasons, but I'm not sure if a good fit for a users base of 5 or 6 with no real scope to grow. I've never used Azure and I plan to develop using MVC and a SQL backend as this is my main skillset.
A few points in favour of Azure in my mind are:
Tight integration with the TFS preview that I'm using for this project
Easy to setup a sandpit and a live version
Easy maintenance as I expect other hosted options will require more knowledge of underlying OS
Sticking to a full Microsoft stack should hopefully make things simpler
From what I find on the Azure site the message is all about scalability, which is great if you need it.
My question is simply, do you need a large user base, or plans to grow quickly, to use azure or is it how we should be hosting apps now?
What you're asking here is the perfect case for Windows Azure Web Sites:
You get 10 web sites for free (no custom DNS, but this is perfect for your 'sandpit'/test version). The shared mode supports custom DNS and is very cheap.
Tight integration with TFS preview and GitHub
You don't need to worry about the underlying OS, you simply publish from Visual Studio or with TFS Preview.
Sticking to the Microsoft stack is the easiest solution, but other technologies work great aswell. Since you're talking about MVC I'm assuming you are considering ASP.NET MVC, which is a perfect match with Windows Azure. Take a look at the training kit for some good examples.
The day you'll need a solution which more scalable (meaning you'll have more users and more income) you can easily upgrade to a reserved instance or to a Cloud Service (Web/Worker Role).
About your question: "My question is simply, do you need a large user base, or plans to grow quickly, to use azure or is it how we should be hosting apps now?"
Windows Azure is a cloud service platform (includes PaaS as Cloud Services, IaaS as Windows Azure Virtual Machines and also Websites suggest by Sandrino above), and with cloud services you have ability to start very small and grow as much and as quickly as your user requirement is, so you can use Azure with both cases. On the other hand there are some advantages using certain offering depend on your which service you are going to use to run your application.
I think article (Section: "What Should I Use? Making a Choice") will explain the strategy about how you make a selection among various services.
This SO discussion does talks about the difference between cloud Services and Azure WebSites as well.