I am interested in the best practices to access Windows Azure API from a Silverlight application? I am pretty sure as an experienced developer it will require me to build a back end web service that silverlight can then use as an interface between Azure API and Silverlight. But I am concerned with speed and security...For instance I am guessing I can use WCF, but what is the fastest way to get this communication to occur?
Also this is an assumption on my part that a webservice is needed, is there any support from Azure for Silverlight? I couldn't find anything on Microsoft site about this, only how to host a Silverlight application on your Azure Storage Blob which is not what I am asking...
Thanks!
Your assumption is correct. You will have to create a web service (wcf is considered best practice) that exposes the methods in the Azure API that you want to access.
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I have a basic query on Azure Cognitive search -I have confusion that, will it comes under PaaS or SaaS service? With my understanding I feel it should be PaaS, since it requires configuration and deployment involved. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Azure Cognitive Search is a PaaS service. While there is a portal experience to help configure and evaluate the service, you need to write your own application to call the service in order to use its functionality.
Azure Cognitive Search is a search-as-a-service.
Search as a service uses a software as a service (SaaS) model.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_as_a_service
As a Customer of Azure cognitive search, I had to code all back-end services that can handle creating of data sources, indexers and indexes and also the same for calling the rest API to get the data, so even if it is possible to do it via the portal azure interface we still need to code to get some advanced features not yet presents in the interface.
So I believe it is a PAAS cloud type.
My app was built using Parse as a backend. My understanding is that the plug-and-play architecture of Parse is limiting - that the services layer that should be used for business logic doesn't exist or is limited. Now I'm debating whether to build a custom backend or to use Amazon Mobile Hub. My concern though is that if I chose Amazon Mobile Hub I will run into the same services layer issues I experienced with Parse.
I'm wondering if my assumption is correct: does Amazon Mobile Hub have a non-existent or limited services layer?
I would suggest you to try AWS Amplify https://aws-amplify.github.io/
I am developing a web application in ASP.NET MVC, iOS and Android app using Xamarin that would have a common SQL Server database. I would want to develop a common layer/object that will have functions and methods common to all applications. I am also concerned about database security. I would want understand is there any other way in which this can be achieved.
I planning this roadmap :
I will develop web service or WCF services and host on a server, applications will communicate with these services and services will communicate with DB server.
If I develop web service or WCF service and host on a server, I want to prevent direct access and attack.
Which is better for my applications, web service or wcf service?
Masters please guide me.
I need to track usage statistics (such as which features are mostly used etc.) for my Windows Forms app that communicates with a WCF Service. Can anyone suggest how to achieve this using Google analytics? Also what is the best way to implement this, from the client app or the WCF service or both?
You can send data directly to Google Analytics using the Measurement Protocol.
The requests are sent via HTTP, so in terms of whether you should send it from the client or the server or both, the choice is yours. Do whatever is easiest.
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