Windows Azure Mobile services help students build professional apps

Ever wanted to develop a Windows 8 or Windows Phone app which reads and writes data from a database? It just got a lot easier.

You want to build an app, a really good app. Depending on the type of app you want to build, you may need your app to access a database.

Normally, when you want to create an app to read and update data, you create a WCF “Windows Communication Foundation” web service. This web service usually connects to a SQL server database hosted on your server or on SQL Azure. In your web service you create methods to read records, delete records, add records and update records in the database.

There are lots of apps built with this model. But chances are  your school never taught you how to build a web service, so there is a learning curve. If your priority is to add this functionality as quickly as possible with the confidence that you have a good architecture, check out Windows Azure Mobile Services. Windows Azure Mobile services provides an API that you can use to call methods to add, update, or delete records and you don’t have to publish your own web service. How do you get it? Sign up for Windows Azure, create a new Mobile service and then add a reference to the Windows Azure Mobile service API and start using it!

How to get started

• Mobile Services tutorial
• To-do List sample app
• Resources for developing with Windows Azure Mobile Services.

For more details on how to get started with Windows Azure Mobile Services, check out this video.