Mobile Service returning a different token from the original?

Question

The specification here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/jj710106.aspx

states that the response body contains the "original authentication token". However, even in the example it is different from the one originally sent to the server. What is the difference between these different tokens, why are they called the same and how should they be used?

Answer 1

The documentation is incorrect. The token sent to the service is a Live SDK token; the token returned by the service is an Azure Mobile Services token. It currently wraps the given token, adding more information specific to the mobile service, but that's an implementation detail which can change in the future (in other words, you should always treat the token returned by the call as an opaque blob of data) - as long as you keep passing that token along in subsequent calls, those calls will consider to be authenticated.

I'll pass this information along to the team to have them fix the documentation, thanks for pointing it out.