New Mobile Authentication vs WAB

Question

Thank you for releasing a new API for mobile authentication with Windows Azure.  If developing a Windows Store App, when is it appropriate to use Windows Authentication Broker (WAB) vs. Mobile Services authentication?  I see in the documentation that Mobile Services Auth for authentication providers besides LiveId requires sign-in each time an app launches.  This limitation is not present in WAB -- I am curious to know why this limitation exists.  Clearly it is undesirable and the applications bundled with Windows 8 which use third-party authentication (i.e. People App) do not require Facebook authentication each time the app is launched.  In short -- I have two questions.  What is the advantage of Mobile Services Auth vs WAB and why is it necessary for users to sign-in each time the app is launched.

Answer 1

Mobile Services authentication actually uses the WAB - the control you see popup is Windows' WAB so there's no choice to make.

If you want to do your own OAuth flows - use WAB.

If you want to use Mobile Services - use our client which uses WAB :)

At present, we don't cache the authentication so if the app is shutdown you will need to login again. We are looking to improve this very soon so the authentication can be securely saved to outlive a shutdown (note that for suspended apps, you won't need to login again).

WAB makes no statement about the longevity of your credentials, that's up to the developer who uses WAB.

Josh

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http://twitter.com/joshtwist

Answer 2

Thanks Josh.  As an aside, I hope future improvements are made to WAB.  It doesn't play nice with Facebook and can and often does cut off first-time authorization dialogs, in addition to existing problems with a large vertical span.  Interestingly, web-based dialogs don't have this issue and so I think WAB is suspect.