Windows Azure Mobile Services

INTRODUCTION TO WINDOWS AZURE MOBILE SERVICES xvii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 1

What Is Azure? 2

A Brief History of Azure 2

Windows Azure Features 3

Execution Model 3

Data Storage 5

Connectivity 6

Authentication 7

Messaging 8

And Now, Back to Our Show 8

Setting Up WAMS 9

Generating a Sample Application 13

Summary 16

CHAPTER 2: CREATING AND MANIPULATING DATA 17

The Data Model 18

Client-Side Functionality 26

Summary 38

CHAPTER 3: MOBILE SERVICES VALIDATION 39

Adding Server-Side Scripts 39

Inserting Data 42

Updating Data 43

Deleting Data 44

Retrieving Data 45

The User Object 47

Common Scenarios 48

Summary 57

CHAPTER 4: AUTHENTICATION OPTIONS IN WAMS 58

Federated Authentication 58

Setting Up the Authentication Providers 61

Configuring Your Service for Authentication 72

Authentication on the Client Side 74

Troubleshooting Authentication 77

Summary 78

CHAPTER 5: USING REST TO ACCESS WAMS DATA 79

Representational State Transfer 79

GET 80

POST 80

PUT 81

DELETE 81

REST and WAMS 82

Authentication in REST 88

Summary 92

CHAPTER 6: PUSH NOTIFICATIONS 93

Registering Your Application 95

Windows Notification Services 95

Google Cloud Messaging 98

Apple Push Notification Services 99

Configuring Your Mobile Service 100

The Mechanics of Push Notifications 101

Requesting a Channel 101

Sending Notifications 104

Summary 106

CHAPTER 7: ADVANCED SCRIPTING 107

Auditing Updates 107

Supporting Other Data Types 109

Supporting Arrays 113

Additional User Information 118

Facebook 118

Google 119

Microsoft Account 120

Twitter 120

Scheduling Tasks 121

Summary 125

CHAPTER 8: ADVANCED CONFIGURATION 126

Scaling WAMS 126

Horizontal versus Vertical Scaling? 127

Using an Existing Database 130

Monitoring WAMS 133

Summary 136