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I have reading about the new Azure offerings and trying to figure out what is what. The documentation I have been finding all over seems to have more information about the frameworks that are not valid anymore like this one here. Most of what they talk about at 4.8, 5.23, 12.13 into the video are no longer valid.

So far what I understand is that Mobile Services was offered in the past. That will soon be discontinued and App Services will take over. App Services are the top level services that contain Api Apps, Mobile Apps and Web Apps. Is this correct?

I am confused as to why we have Api Apps and Mobile Apps. Don't they do the same thing? And now that we have Web Apps in addition, are they only limited to UI related applications? The only simple thing to understand and one that has no similar other offering is the Logic app. This seems to be something that can only be done on the Azure portal. Visual Studio has no project template for it. Is there something that needs to be installed for creating logic apps in my visual studio only?

Also, in Visual Studio 2015 what is the difference between the Asp.Net Web Application project template under the WEB node and the CLOUD node? They both seem to be holding the same templates within.

Why do we have Azure Mobile App and Azure Mobile Service right under the Cloud node like here below.. enter image description here

..and also after selecting Asp.Net Web Application enter image description here

On the face of it, both look the same. Are there any subtle differences that one needs to know about? Also, why are all these options also not available for Asp.Net 5 templates? With all the changes happening is it a good idea to put apps developed under the latest versions to production?

Thanks for any pointers.

user20358
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3 Answers3

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Azure Mobile Apps are the next version of Azure Mobile Services. Azure Mobile Services has been deprecated, and you can't provision it on new subscriptions. Mobile Apps has a lot more features over Mobile Services. To learn more, see I use Mobile Services, how does App Service help?.

Mobile Apps, Web Apps, and API Apps are all essentially the same thing, they just have some extra features for building particular solutions. You publish each of them to an App Service Plan, which is the actual underlying VM that hosts your service.

Once you've provisioned one of these app types, you can publish a Web API to it, regardless of what app type it is. For instance, you can publish your API to a Web App or Mobile App. Once you've picked a particular app type, you aren't locked in, you will just see a slightly different UI in the Azure Portal.

Mobile Apps also have a Mobile Server SDK for Node.js or .NET. The .NET server SDK is an extension of ASP.NET Web API. It doesn't yet support ASP.NET 5, mainly because there is a dependency on the OData library, which doesn't yet support ASP.NET 5. However, Mobile Apps is under active development and will support ASP.NET 5. Unfortunately, we don't have a timeline to share, mainly because not all the dependencies are complete.

For Mobile Apps in particular, you get the features of client SDKs that support authentication, offline sync, and push notifications. The easiest way to learn about the offering is to follow the quickstart guide: Create a Windows app on App Service.

You can learn all about the SDK and try them out, even without an Azure Account. Here's documentation about the .NET server SDK: Work with the .NET backend server SDK for Azure Mobile Apps.

API apps have a few extra features like creating a metadata endpoint for you automatically, which you can then use to generate client library using Visual Studio.

Currently, only Web Apps and Mobile Apps have a demo experience available at Try App Service, but you can see the API experience if you use a Microsoft Account to sign in, and then manage the app in the Azure Portal. You will see all of the API app and Mobile App options in the portal.

Note that Web and Worker roles are part of Cloud Services, and are a totally separate service. To learn about the difference between these, see Azure App Service, Virtual Machines, Service Fabric, and Cloud Services comparison.

lindydonna
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  • Thanks for the reply Lindy. So going forward will things like Web and Worker roles matter or has the web role now grown into Web/Mobile and API apps with worker role now being called Logic Apps and being capable of running much more than just background processes which the other apps[Web/Mobile/Api] are not supposed to do? – user20358 Jun 01 '16 at 18:24
  • You said `API apps have a few extra features like creating a metadata endpoint for you automatically`, so does that mean that API Apps are a superset of Mobile Apps? – user20358 Jun 01 '16 at 18:38
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    @user20358 Web and Worker roles are part of Cloud Services, and are a totally separate service. To learn about the difference between the services, see [Azure App Service, Virtual Machines, Service Fabric, and Cloud Services comparison](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/choose-web-site-cloud-service-vm/). Mobile Apps and API Apps each have extra features over web apps, but neither is a subset of the other. You can use them together, however. – lindydonna Jun 01 '16 at 20:06
  • Thank you for the clarifications Donna. These have really helped clear things out. – user20358 Jun 01 '16 at 23:28
  • When using custom authorization I want to use the claim based approach by setting a [ClaimsPrinciplePermission] attribute on the secured controller methods. In the login example above, on validating the the login, I want to set a bunch of claims to the token being created and pass that token to every request from my Xamarin forms client. Is there a working example of how this is achieved? – user20358 Jun 02 '16 at 05:50
  • @user20358 If the answer was helpful, please accept it. If you have more questions about login, please post a new question--it'll be a lot easier to answer that way. – lindydonna Jun 02 '16 at 22:15
  • Yes it was. Thank you. – user20358 Jun 03 '16 at 22:58
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I just describe what is the difference between Azure App Service, Mobile Apps and Api Apps, hope it helps:

  • Web and Mobile Apps o Mobile Apps offer a mobile application development platform with a rich set of capabilities. Based on Azure Mobile Services, Mobile Apps provide developers with a comprehensive set of client SDKs including Windows, iOS and Android as well as multi-platform environments such as Xamarin and Cordova. With Mobile Apps, you can easily send push notifications to your app, add login, and store data in the cloud with offline sync to any mobile client.
  • With API Apps, you can select from a rich library of existing on-premises and cloud APIs as well as contribute their own APIs easily for public or private use by Logic, Web, and Mobile apps in Azure App Service.
  • Azure app service, is a solution for creating web and mobile apps, is a cloud services that unifies everything you need to quickly and easily create enterprise apps that run on any platform or any device.

Azure app service is composed of: Web Apps, Logic Apps, Mobile Apps and API Apps

Jessica Perez
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  • What really is the difference between Mobile Apps and Api Apps. From this tutorial here;[https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-mobile-ios-get-started/] it seems like Mobile Apps just creates a wrapper around one data source, as shown in step 2. If I want more complex scenarios to be coded in, I need to go the Api App route. Is my understanding correct? Also mobile apps generate code for the various front end devices like it shows in step 3 but Api Apps don't. Is this correct? I don't have an azure account so I can only make do with guess work.Thanks for replying. – user20358 May 31 '16 at 15:41
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    Mobile Apps are Web Apps that have some built in features and configurations allowing you to quickly store Data in the Cloud using an OData interface (OData is a superset of REST) with this in mind the answer is yes, then .. API Apps is about hosting APIs with this you can develop and consume APIs in a easy way. Finally for the 3rd question, with Mobile Apps you can use Client SDKs to develop hybrid applications (Apache Cordova), cross-platform (xamarin forms or xamarin for android/ios) and native development (iOS, Windows and Android). – Jessica Perez May 31 '16 at 18:04
  • In this link [link](https://tryappservice.azure.com/) you can immediately create a short-lived web app in App Service, you do not need credit card. – Jessica Perez May 31 '16 at 18:04
  • Thanks for the reply Jessica. I wanted to check out API Apps as I was interested in publishing a web api, but that is not available for trying out like the other apps. It needs a credit card. This is the message I am getting when I select API Apps. `The Azure API App trial experience is not here yet, but you can still create API Apps by signing up for a free 30-day trial which enables the creation of up to 10 apps of any type for free.` I am going to try out Web Apps in the hope that I can publish a WebApi like a web application - if thats an acceptable way to do it? – user20358 May 31 '16 at 20:53
  • No, you cannot use API APPs with out an azure account :( you should use the free 30 days trial and with this you can create your API APP. The credit card is only use for registration and will no be billed. – Jessica Perez Jun 01 '16 at 07:05
  • Once I do a trial with my credit card, will I be able to use the same card again when the next version comes out or if there are any more new updates to check out? – user20358 Jun 01 '16 at 14:07
  • Yes, you can use the same credit card but with a new id/email, in this way the account will be new. – Jessica Perez Jun 01 '16 at 20:02
  • Good to know. Thank you Jessica. – user20358 Jun 01 '16 at 23:28
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There is no longer API Apps in Azure, there is now only Web Apps.

Michael
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