Telerik blogs
April was a strong month for Telerik Platform that revealed two new products: AppPrototyper a new tool for creating high-fidelity mobile app prototypes, and AppManager - our app management and distribution tool. We also introduced a new more affordable Telerik Platform edition at $39 per month with a yearly commitment.
 
Today, we are continuing to power the Telerik mobile app development platform with new improvements in our Backend Services with the official release of Data Connectors for Microsoft SQL, Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Cloud Code debugging capabilities.

Data Connectors for Microsoft SQL, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL

Data Connectors for MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL were announced last month as a Private Beta available for a selected group of web developers looking to utilize their existing databases to create mobile apps with our tools.

This functionality is now available to all Telerik Platform Business subscription owners and trial users. In addition to the Data Connectors introduced in April, we are also adding a brand new Data Connector for PostgreSQL.

Data Connectors are powerful tools to mobilize enterprise data residing in databases part of your corporate network. Using the new Create Type from Data Connector button you can create Types that talk directly to a table or view in your database. These Content Types provide out of the box services for Create, Read, Update, Delete (CRUD) operations, as well as filtering and sorting mechanism.

There is no code required to create powerful and scalable cloud services optimized for mobile apps that use your existing database.

 

In order to use Data Connectors, you also need to set up a tiny Data Link Server that is hosted in IIS and has network access to your database. The Data Link Server is responsible for facilitating the communication between the Backend Services and your database living behind the firewall. The Data Link Server uses a Simple Web Token authentication mechanism and can be configured with an SSL certificate, so that your data in transit is encrypted.

Debugging Cloud Code

With the Telerik Backend Services Cloud Code, you can easily write additional business logic for your app that is executed on the server and doesn’t have to be replicated for each client. You can use the cloud code to make external HTTP calls that help you integrate with 3rd party systems, validate the input of incoming data, and modify the response of your services. You have the ability to write custom cloud code logic before and after Create, Read, Update and Delete operations for your Content Types all done using our JavaScript SDK in the cloud.

With this release, we are adding capabilities to debug your cloud code straight in the Chrome or Opera browsers. To start a debugging session, navigate to a specific Content Type, select the Cloud Code tab, and click on Debugging->Start Debugging.

This opens the Browser’s Developer Tools with a loaded session of your cloud code that you can set breakpoints, watch expressions, or use the debugging console.

Your service can potentially receive many requests at the same time which makes it hard to debug a specific service call from the client. That is why, we have added a new Header X-Everlive-Debug = true that you can pass to a service call that you want to debug and this will start a debugging session. The Backend Services SDKs support passing custom headers with each request making it easy to set the debugging header. Further, if you are using a Kendo UI DataSource, you can configure the Transport method to include your custom header for specific operations like “create” for example.

Here is a quick example on how to enable debugging for all create operations against a content type called “Events” using a Kendo UI DataSource.

var el = new Everlive("YOUR-API-KEY-HERE");
 
var dataSource = new kendo.data.DataSource({
    type: "everlive",
    transport: {
        typeName: "Events",
        create: {
            beforeSend: function (xhr) {
                xhr.setRequestHeader("X-Everlive-Debug", "true")
            }
        }
    },
    schema: {
        model: {
            id: Everlive.idField
        }
    }
});

Coming soon ...

These are just a set of improvements we have scheduled for our Cloud Code services. You can expect support for debugging cloud code straight in your Desktop-based IDEs and our Visual Studio extension and ability to write independent cloud functions with their own endpoints soon.

 

TryNow_BackEndServices

Hristo Borisov

About the Author

Hristo Borisov

Hristo Borisov (@hristoborisov) is currently a product line manager in Telerik leading all cloud technologies part of the Telerik Platform after spending more than 6 years with the company. A passionate advocate of applying lean startup practices to existing organizations, Hristo is on the quest for discovering scalable and sustainable business models through product and customer development using tools like MVPs, Pivots, and Lean Business Model Canvases.

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