1. Hybrid Apps: Azure Mobile Engagement and the App Economy
Ervin Loh
ALM Program Manager

2. Presenter Ervin Loh (Visual Studio ALM MVP) Profile
Profile
Ervin Loh is currently the Application Lifecycle Management Program Manager at K365Labs Sdn Bhd. He is the user group lead of Application Lifecycle Management User Community, a charter of TechNation. He has also been presented with the Microsoft MVP award in the Visual Studio ALM competency for 8 consecutive years from 2009 through He owns more than 10 years experience in the IT industry where he obtained professional certifications from IREB, ISTQB, and Microsoft. He works on a variety of Application Lifecycle Management products. He is also active in the IT community space by contributing contents to Microsoft Malaysia's START.NET and Ultimate program workshops and talks in conferences, events and user groups such as TechEd, Softec, Tech Insights, MITPM, ALMUC, and MIND.

3. Azure footprint 16 regions worldwide in 2014 Data Centers
Regional Partners

4. >57% >300k >1.65 >30 >3 >300 >13 1,000,000
Fortune 500 using Azure
>57%
More than
1,000,000
SQL Databases in Azure
>300k
Active websites
>30
TRILLION storage objects
>300
MILLION
AAD users
>1.65
MILLION
Developers registered with Visual Studio Online
>3
MILLION requests/sec
>13
BILLION
authentication/wk

5. Source control, table scripts, custom API
Mobile Services
Windows Store
iOS
Android
Windows Phone 8
HTML 5/JS
Connected Apps
Store Data in the Cloud
Table Storage
Blob Storage
Mongo DB
SQL
Source control, table scripts, custom API
&
Scheduler
User Authentication
Active Directory
Facebook
Twitter
Microsoft
Google
SDKs
Push Notifications
REST API
WNS & MPNS
APNS
GCM

6. Supported Platforms Windows 8 iOS Windows Phone Android
HTML5 & Javascript

7. DEMO Creating a Mobile Service

8. Data Structured Storage with SQL database
9/19/2018 6:13 AM
Data
Structured Storage with SQL database
Point multiple apps at the same db, partitioned
AppX.Todoitem
AppY.Todoitem
Manage data in
Portal—Mobile Services or SQL
SQL Management Studio
REST API
CLI Tools
azure mobile create <service-name> <server-admin> <server-password>
© 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

9. Table scripts Automatic service REST API generated for storage
9/19/2018 6:13 AM
Table scripts
Automatic service REST API generated for storage
Dynamic schema on/off
item.created = new Date();
Server logic that intercepts CRUD operations
Connect to Windows Azure and third party services
var azure = require(‘azure’);
var sendgrid = require(‘sendgrid’).SendGrid;
Querying
© 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

10. Table Scripts Supported Modules and Globals mssql request console
push.*
tables
xml2js
statusCodes
Windows Azure Node SDK
Windows Store Partners (Sengrid, Twilio, Pusher)

11. DEMO Implementing Table Scripts on CRUD Operations

12. Push Notifications 101 Register device handle at app launch
Client app contacts Platform Notification Service (PNS)
App updates handle in backend
client app
Platform
Notification
Service
Send Notification
App backend sends notification to PNS
PNS pushes the notification to the app on the device
Maintain device handles
Delete expired handles when PNS rejects them
App back-end

13. Push Notification Challenges
While there are significant benefits to using push notifications in a mobile app, rolling your own push infrastructure is extremely difficult in terms of implementing a system capable of:
Cross-Platform Push Notifications
Each push service (APNS for iOS, GCM for Android, WNS for Windows, etc.) has different protocols (e.g., HTTP vs. TCP, xml payload vs. JSON payload)
Personalizing on the server-side based on interest and location
Segmenting users based on interest tags and routing only the most relevant content to each segment
Localizing notifications on the client-side based on language, currency, device, etc.
Each device displays notifications differently
High-Volume with Low Latency
Limited by the capability of each VM so need to spin up scores of VMs and shard your application in order to serve a large user base
Maintaining accurate device handle registry
Adding registrations upon installation, updating tags, pruning upon on uninstall

14. Azure Push Notifications
One-time set up
Create a Notification Hub
Register
The client app retrieves its current handle from the PNS.
Client app (or app backend) registers the handle with Notification Hub
Send Notification
The app back-end sends a message to the Notification Hub.
Notification Hub pushes it to the PNS
Android app
iOS app
Windows 8.x
app
App back-end
GCM
APNs
WNS
MPNS

15. Without Notification Hubs With Notification Hubs
Challenge Area
Without Notification Hubs
With Notification Hubs
Cross-Platform Push
Separate registration logic
Separate communication paths using different protocols for each platform push notification service
Upload credentials and go
Notification Hubs establishes and maintains communication paths
Personalization
Field to create and maintain in device registry for each segmentation point
Nulls for existing registered devices as additional interest points are added
Logic to route each message through the appropriate and available VM(s)
Assign interest tags to each registered device and send to any subset of uses you can define with a Boolean expression of tags
Localization
Send different messages for different formats, languages, etc. since each message contains different content
Create a template for each device based on display preferences (banner vs toast, language, currency, etc.)
No additional logic required
Single message to send
High-Volume, Low Latency
Go with small VMs to process the work and end up with higher latency due to the time it takes to spin up many machines
Go with large VMs, always keeping a few ready and waiting, and end up paying for idle VMs
Automatically handled by Notification Hubs, which is designed to deliver millions of notifications within minutes
Pay only for the push notifications you send, never idle VMs
Maintaining Device Registry
Create and maintain device table with likely many null values as you add new interest tags
Logic to handle expirations due to uninstalls; possible suspensions from PNS if incomplete
Maintains device registry and automatically updates based on uninstalls

16. DEMO Adding Push Notifications

17. Thank you!

18. Q&A

19. Microsoft Certification & Training Resources Resources for Developers
TechNet
Microsoft
Learning
Microsoft
Resources for IT Professionals
Microsoft Certification & Training Resources
MSDN
Microsoft
Resources for Developers