Windows Azure Mobile Services and Compression - gzip

Does Windows Azure Mobile Services supports GZIP Compression?

Not at this moment. Feel free to post this feature request in the MSDN forums for Azure Mobile Services, and the team will consider it.

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Does Bluemix support MBaaS (Mobile Backend as a Service)?

I am reading about and then trying to use IBM Bluemix. I have seen some confusing statement about MBaaS support on Bluemix. Some sites mention that Bluemix is a PaaS, and some places say it supports MBaaS. I have basic doubts: does IBM support MBaaS? If yes, where can I find the full MBaaS features list for IBM Bluemix? I couldn't find it in IBM site.
You're correct: Bluemix is a PaaS. However as you probably know and as you can see here:
Mobile backend as a service (MBaaS) enables you to quickly integrate
your mobile apps with data and functions in security-rich, backend,
cloud storage. MBaaS is usually delivered through a set of custom
software development kits (SDKs) and application programming
interfaces (APIs). MBaaS can offer you full data synchronization, user
management, push notifications, integration with social networking
services, and file-handling.
A PaaS provides SDKs and APIs and for this reason it can support MBaaS. In Bluemix the MBaaS capabilities are provided by the MobileFirst platform. It is designed for building and enhancing multiplatform, enterprise-grade apps that can be native or hybrid – for Android, iOS, and Windows. You can get started here.
Yes, Bluemix Mobile supports a Mobile Backend as a Service.
Here are the current services that we have that support the MBaaS pattern and a bit of information about them (and here's a quick graphical view and some links for how to get started):
Mobile Client Access
This service enables you to secure your Mobile Application. You can add Facebook, Google, or custom authentication to your application.
Push Notifications
You can add the Push Notifications service to send push notifications to your app on Android and iOS.
Mobile Analytics (Beta)
The Mobile Analytics service enables you to gather crash and usage knowlege about customers using your mobile app.
Cloudant NoSQL DB
The Cloudant service is the IBM NoSQL database to store your data.
Object Storage
The Object Storage service is an unstructured cloud data store where you can store things like images or files.
Mobile Foundation
The catalog also includes the Mobile Foundation service which you can use to create a test environment before deploying or purchasing the on-premise software. This service is another way for enabling a developer to create a mobile channel.
You may have a look at this :
http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/mobile-backend-as-a-service/mbaas.html

windows azure media service for storing, Retrieving, Version etc..

Can we perform below task on Windows Azure Media Service that is
storing, Retrieving,maintaining Version of Video, Permission handling, Searching for the video
for each tenant on the SaaS environment
Currently Azure Media services providing infrastructure to ingest, encode and deliver media assets. Complex metadata, versioning, access control and additional content management functionality can be extended by third party providers or in your application.
Short answer that for now Windows Azure Media Service is not positioned as CMS system with listed in your question functionality.
You can use Asset.AlternativeId to store any keys from external system which can be built on top of Windows Azure Media Service.

Connecting to QuickBooks using API

I need some guidelines here. I am creating an online booking system for my client that interfaces with QuickBooks on their internal network (desktop QuickBooks, not online).
Do I need to go the full "publish app" route? I do not wish to sell this app in the marketplace. This is merely a custom booking system designed and paid for by the client. It seems like I need to "publish" the app in the marketplace for them to be able to use it.
Are there ways around this?
Update 06/23/2015 - To connect to a desktop QuickBooks installation the SDK with the Web Connector is now the only recommended approach. Intuit is removing Intuit Partner Platform (IPP) integration to desktop QuickBooks.
For the SDK/Web Connector, you don't need to go through any publication process or anything like that. Just build the solution, and connector your client.
There's a pretty good overview of how the QuickBooks web connector works on our QuickBooks wiki.
The QuickBooks SDK download also includes a huge PDF with detailed documentation about how to implement SDK/Web Connector applications as well.

Windows 8 App with Azure WCF Service

I have a Windows 8 app that I want to connect to a WCF Service hosted on Windows Azure - easy.
The tricky part is that I want to allow only Authenticated users (via their windows live account) to access my service, including being able to pass a unique identifier to the service to identify the user on the Azure hosted app.
All of this plumbing is available when you use Azure Mobile Services, but surely there must be a solution for a regular WCF app within azure.
Azure Mobile Services has a MobileServiceClient type that has all of the required functionality, but I need a regular Azure-hosted WCF equivalent
You can try pulling some of the content from the now deprecated Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows 8. For the moment the Release Preview version is available; it won't work as is since it's pre-RTM, but it should help jumpstart your effort.
I'll re-emphasize though that it's not supported and Windows Azure Mobile Services is the plan of record.

Web Service on Windows Azure?

I am new to Windows Azure and I have a question.
I have:
Web site which deployed to Windows Azure - The web site manage a table (add, edit, delete). I used this guide: Deploying an ASP.NET Web Application to a Windows Azure Web Site and SQL Database
Andorid application & iOS Application (Native Code).
Now, I want the mobile applications to get data (in JSON format) from the web site (and from the DB).
What is the best practice to do that?
I tried to create a Azure (WCF) Service (the project refrenced to the web site project) but I didn't succeded. If this is the way - Is anyone knows a good tutorial to do that?
Is there another option? Maybe from the web site itself?
Thank you very much,
Yuval
If you want to integrate with non-Microsoft technologies I suggest you take a look at the ASP.NET Web API which allows you to build REST services using content negotiation. Content negotiation allows your consumer to specify the format it requires (json, xml, ...).
To host the ASP.NET Web API in a Windows Azure Web Site you should take a look at Carlos' blog, he describes in detail what you need to do to make this work: Creating ASP.NET Web APIs on Azure Web Sites
Have you given ASP.NET Web API a look-see?
http://www.asp.net/web-api