We're developing a Win Phone 8 application. This application needs to synchronize its data with an existing SQL Server database to which other apps connect.
Unfortunately, due to these other apps, moving the SQL Server backend to Azure is not an option at this time.
Being app developers, our initial inclination was to create a WCF service to be the bridge between the phone and the backend database.
However, I was asked to look into Azure for our phone's synchronization efforts. It seems to me that this isn't an appropriate solution--that Azure wants to be the back end. But, I'm (obviously) no expert and don't want to reject Azure without some more experienced people's feedback.
I think we have two major pieces of synchronization: to and from the phone. I think the to goes something like:
- phone sends a request for things of type T newer than <T's max mod date in phone database>
- Service/Azure/middleman responds with anything newer in the SQL Server DB of record.
- phone updates local database
Synchronizing from the phone is a bit more difficult. When new data is in the phone's local database, we need to make a round-trip to SQL Server. The SQL Server/Azure update responds with the newly-created IDs and mod dates to the phone, who updates the local storage so changes made to the source database by other apps can be pushed to the phone by the process above.
This is where I'm getting lost. It's not using Azure as the back end, and I'm having trouble locating articles or information about how to extend Azure to round-trip to SQL Server. I really don't have any idea if Azure is the appropriate platform for what we want to do, or where to find hints to push me forward.
Thanks in advance if anybody has some input.
Other recent topics
