News
Azure Mobile Apps Gains Node.js Support
Microsoft makes significant progress with its Azure App Service by extending Node.js support by releasing a Node SDK for Azure Mobile Apps.
Building on the momentum of the progress being made with the Azure App Service since its debut last May, Microsoft has announced a significant milestone in extending Node.js support by releasing a Node SDK for Azure Mobile Apps.
"This enables you to build and run mobile backends using Node.js on App Service, as well as add push notifications, mobile auth, offline sync and other mobile features and backend APIs to any Node.js app running on App Service," said Christopher Anderson, Microsoft Program Manager for the Azure App Servic, in a blog post.
The Node SDK is open sourced, and Anderson points users to a link on GitHub for those who want to contribute to its development.
Anderson demonstrated an example of Azure Mobile App project with the Node.js hook in the blog post, and links to a more comprehensive explanation showing how to create an Azure Mobile App backend to an iOS app here. Azure Mobile Apps currently support Azure SQL Database and SQL Server via a Mobile Apps Table layer for production-ready apps, and Microsoft also provides an in-memory data store for testing and demonstration only.
On a related note, the end is near for Azure SQL Database Web and Business editions -- in fact, they'll no longer be available as of Saturday, Sept. 12. An announcement about the retirement of those editions went out about a year ago, so if you've still got references to those editions in your projects, you'll find that those projects will probably have issues. As well, you won't be able to create any new projects with those editions, as they just won't be there, after Sept. 12.
Instead, you'll need to update to the Azure SQL DatabaseBasic, Standard, and Premium service tiers, introduced in April 2014 (and updated since then), which have introduced a bit more flexibility in performance and user scalability. A comprehensive guide to upgrading to the new tiers is posted here.
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