Azure Mobile Service: Service Enablement at its Best
In today’s modern era of devices and services app have taken center stage. With the ever increasing use of multitude of devices across various platforms and form factors app developers want to provide the best experience on all the Platforms. Unlike traditional times when the core focus was on the functionality of the app now a days with thousands of apps available in each category it is also important to provide a rich and immersive user experience too In such a scenario Windows Azure provides Mobile app developers and opportunity to build a cloud connected backend in a very short time while giving the developer enough time to focus on user experience and go to market strategies. Another big time and effort saver is the fact that they can create this Mobile Service Backend only once and can utilize it for their apps on all the different Platforms like Windows, Android, iOS etc.
Windows Azure Mobile services is one of the service offerings for mobile developers to develop a cloud based Backend as a part of Windows Azure offerings from Microsoft. Windows Azure is a public cloud offering from Microsoft. It allows building highly scalable applications with pay as you go model where one needs to pay based on the API calls made. Along with an SLA 99.9% which ensures that the downtime of your app
is very minimum. Windows Azure Mobile SDK is available for Windows Store Apps, Windows Phone apps, Android, iOS , HTML, Xamarin for .Net Developers . Moreover apart from SDKs WAMS exposes an open and flexible REST API which can be used for any Platform.
Windows Azure Mobile Services offer services ranging from authentication, data storage, custom API calls, schedulers, Push Notifications etc.
1) Authentication
There is a trend of using third party Authentication like “Login with Facebook” in mobile apps to simplify the logging in process for the users who do not wish to create login credentials for every app. WAMS provides
app developers to integrates oAuth based third party identifications from Social Networks Facebook, Twitter, Google within the app easily with just a few lines of code in your Client App.
2) Push Notifications
Push Notifications are great means to build live and connected apps. It’s a cumbersome process to send push Notifications with WAMS notifications can be sent out to millions of consumersrunning that app. WAMS Push Notifications helps developers to send out notifications through WNS for Windows store Apps, MPNS for Windows Phone, GCM for Google. Some apps scenarios where Push Notifications are very beneficial
include a notification for sending Latest News or a notification for a new high score or like whenever an entry is added to a Database a push Notification could be sent out etc.
3) Data
Data can be stored in SQL Database on Azure, WAMS provides makes it very easy to access this data from the App.There is pre coded script for CRUD operations for Database Tables. Additionally an App developer can also write server side script using JavaScript for controlling access to Data and other Business Logic while working with the Data in these tables.
4) Scheduler
There is also a mechanism to schedule and run server side scripts at specific times. As a developer one can leverage it send out some notification at a particular time or do some other task on the server side at a particular time etc.
Thus for any app developer building across any platform Windows Azure Mobile services allows to build a common cloud connected and secure backend in a turnkey manner within minutes