Azure Web Site with Push notifications - mobile

I'm trying to develop a Windows Phone 8 app. I've created a Web Site in a Windows Azure account which is an MVC 4 project with REST endpoints. I've got an SQL database in Azure to store data from the Azure Web Site. Ocassionaly, I want my application to send PUSH notifications to mobile phones. So I've created a Mobile Service and I've linked the SQL database with the Mobile Service's database in order to have got the same data for the web page and the service.
I though that when I send an HTTP POST to the web site, the script in the database from the Azure Mobile Service would be launched but it looks not to be true. Isn't it? Because of that, I would write in the controller of an HTTP POST endpoint the code to send the data to the Mobile Service endpoint in order to launch the JavaScript code to send the Push Notification.
Is that the right approach for my goal? Is there any way for sending PUSH notifications from an Azure Web Site or it is only allowed from a Mobile Service?
My last question: Do you know any books or blogs about development in Windows Azure? On the Internet there is lots of documentation but principally those are get started tutorials. I've read some books but those are really complex, boring, and not really practical.

As your website MVC4 based and is running on Windows Azure using SQL Database as backend, I will guess that it is based on ASP.NET and i will write my suggestion based on that.
Now about your question "Is there any way for sending PUSH notifications from a Azure Web Site or it is only allowed from a Mobile Service?" I would say, Azure Mobile web services are designed for the same purpose for any service running on Windows Azure to send push notification on multiple of platforms. Application developer can choose to use Mobile Services to expedite their development as well as have multiple application using the one single service for such objective.
However as you mentioned "Is there any way for sending PUSH notifications from a Azure Web Site" this is not depend on "Azure web sites" instead it is depend on what development technology you are using with your Windows Azure Application. For example in ASP.NET your can use SignalR implementation if your application is based on Java, PHP, Python, Node,js etc then you can find some other run time specific real time implementation. If you look around for websockets you will find implementation in almost every popular language or look for comet programming on this regard. Not only that you can use some of the popular 3rd party applications for this purpose as well. i.e. pusher or any other.
While Windows Azure Mobile Services will give you the best results on Windows Azure platform as it is designed to provide such specific functionality for applications running on it.

Recently released: Azure Notification Hub
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj927170.aspx

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is there any skype api available to integrate with salesforce [skypedeveloper]

we wanted customize our salesforce application via giving the skype conference link while sending the email from the application itself. the application is completely on visualforce pages and controller so i dont see any appexchange app will help on this.
I have already checked the below links though i could not get any integration apis
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/skype/ucwa/onlinemeetinginvitation_ref
https://ucwa.skype.com/websdk
There are no integration Apis as of now. Only you have to write your own integration logic using Skype for Web SDK. It is a bit complicated SDK and not properly documented or maintained. It has tight coupling with Azure AD and video streaming doesn't work in Chrome/Firefox.
Some integration use cases/examples can be found here
Other relevant information.
https://dev.skype.com/
https://github.com/OfficeDev/skype-docs/tree/master/Skype

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I'm trying to build an offline first web application using couchdb and pouchdb as the backend/frontend databases, AngularJS as the frontend framework and expressjs/nodejs as the backend server. The problem is that what I'm used to is the backend-MVC mindset of building web apps, and not to SPAs, offline-first design, or having only json apis on the application server.
The problem I see with the design I'm considering is that I don't see any role of the nodejs server except serving static files. The frontend would get data from the pouchdb database which would sync with the couchdb database backend. I need an offline-first application capable of working locally when there's no connectivity and syncing when connectivity is available, so this is important.
But where do I implement the important bits of application logic that I need in the backend, like form input validation or user access control? I found some ways to embed logic in couchdb databases (like using filters as shown here) but somehow writing application logic in the database doesn't feel right.
What part of the big picture am I missing here?

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I am building a mobile application targeting iOS, Android and WP with Ionic/Cordova. And using ASP.NET Web API 2 REST APIs backend.
I have the requirement that the mobile application can collect data and synchronise it with the APIs and if the mobile is offline, the sync will happen when it is online. The data size is small and any light DB would do including the localStorage one. The required sync is only needed one way, mobile to APIs. Also, once a record is synchronised, it can be deleted from the mobile.
I was looking at Couchbase mobile, but I found it is a Mobile DB to DB sort of a solution.
Can you recommend a mobile DB to REST/Web API sync solution?
With the native Couchbase Mobile solution for Android/iOS coupled with the REST APIs you are able to get data from Mobile device to your backend. Then delete any documents off your device once you get back a 200 status.
For Windows Phone, you can explore using PouchDB or going with the javascript browser based solution across all platforms since WP is not currently supported.
For the replication or sync to occur when your device is online again, you would require your backend to use Couchbase Server and implement the replication class methods in your native mobile app to have the push feature. Or you can use the REST API with logic detection when you are online again to POST to your backend.

Accessing SANs through Application on the cloud

I am preparing to make a project "Accessing SANS through application on the cloud"
the objective of the project is deploy a SAN in our company and allow users to upload and use data through application stored at Google App Engine.
Is this achieveable? if yes then how could application deploy on google server access my company's network for data?
Is the project too hard? Plz advice..
The App Engine only allows http(s) communication, your SAN will need to have some sort of web server that allows deploying file using some sort of a PUT or POST handler.
If not the SAN you will have to implement that web web server inside your organization, that web server will need to be open to the internet (but have a security layer to prevent from anyone to access it)

Google App engine for mobile clients

Can I use GAE(Google App Engine) for developing a server for mobile clients? Mobile clients will send data to server every 10 seconds.
I am planning to develop the prototype using GAE and then depending on the results, will decide where to locate the prod server.
And are there any best practices to follow in developing code so that it will have very minimal dependancy with GAE (Can easily port to another environment with minimal code change when required)
thanks.
Ofcourse you can, GAE provides a good way to create a great backend for a mobile app.
about dependencies, you can use a project like django-nonrel, it creates an interface between your code and the API of GAE.

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