Introduction to Azure Mobile Services
One of my favorite Microsoft Services to tell developers about is Windows Azure. Windows Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform which offers developers a ton of great resources for building cloud enabled applications.
One of these resources is Azure Mobile Services . Azure Mobile Services provides developers the ability to quickly deploy a full featured and scalable backend for their application. Their application can be written in any language and deployed to any platform (including iOS and Android) because all features of Mobile Services can be accessed via a REST API. To assist developers even further there are SDKs available for C#, JavaScript, iOS, Android, and cross platform tools like Xamarin and PhoneGap.
Some features of Mobile Services include:
- Data storage
- User authentication and data authorization
- Custom server side scripts written in Node.JS or C#
- Push notifications for Windows, iOS, and Android applications
- A scheduler service for running reoccurring tasks
I highly encourage all developers writing applications to check out Mobile Services. In about a hour you can complete the following tutorials and have a great understanding of the basics of Mobile Services.
Getting Started with Azure Mobile Services using the javascript API:
- Connect your application to Mobile Services
- Validate and modify data with server scripts
- Add authentication to your application
- Limit data access for users
Getting Started with Azure Mobile Services using the .NET API (Windows Store App):