The Evolution of Windows Azure Mobile Services
There are a number new features that have been released for Azure Mobile Services. Here are some important links that can get you up to speed quickly and efficiently.
| The Azure Mobile Services SDK is Open Source. | You can download it here. | https://go.microsoft.com/fwLink/p/?LinkID=268375 |
| Getting started tutorial. | Using the portal you can create your mobile service, add a database, download and modify your client application (currently iOS and Windows Phone 8, Windows Store, soon Android will come), and test your application. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-with-data-dotnet/ |
| Relational data for your mobile application | Supplying data to your iOS, Android or Windows 8/Phone applications. This is a very simple way to provide relational data from SQL Database to mobile applications. You can add tables and access the data in a RESTful way. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-with-data-dotnet/ |
| Server side scripting | Validate and modify data using server scripts. These server scripts allow you to run JavaScript code on the server when data is inserted, update, and deleted. You can do things like validate the length of strings and reject strings that are too long. You should always validate user input by testing type, length, format, and range. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/validate-modify-and-augment-data-dotnet/ |
| Paging through data | When queries from mobile devices use too much data, it is important to use paging to manage the amount of data returned to your mobile applications from Windows Azure Mobile Services. You can use the Take and Skip query methods on the client to request specific pages of data. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/add-paging-to-data-dotnet/ |
| Authenticating users | Learn how to authenticate users from your app. You can restrict access to specific tables. Microsoft supports Live Connect, Facebook, Twitter, and Google. You can apply a table level permissions for insert, update, delete, and read. The iOS client library for Mobile Services is currently under development on GitHub. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-with-users-dotnet/ |
| Authorizing data access | Use server scripts to authorize authenticated users for accessing data in Windows Azure Mobile Services. Learn how to filter queries based on the userId of an authenticated user, ensuring that each user can see only their own data. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/authorize-users-in-scripts-dotnet/ |
| Push notifications | Use Windows Azure Mobile Services to send push notifications to a Windows Store app, using the Windows Push Notification service (WNS). | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-with-push-dotnet/ |
| Push Notifications Part 2 | Learn about server side scripts and verifying push notification behavior. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/get-started-with-push-dotnet/ |
| Send email from Mobile Services with SendGrid. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/send-email-with-sendgrid/ | |
| Background processes | Schedule backend jobs in Mobile Services. Use the job scheduler functionality in the Management Portal to define server script code that is executed based on a schedule that you define. The job scheduler could be used to archive data records, or issue web requests to get tweets or rss feeds that could be later saved. You might also wish to resize images or process data that has been sent by the mobile application. | https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/schedule-backend-tasks/ |