Microsoft Azure Advanced: Function Apps

Name: Microsoft Azure Advanced: Function Apps
Author: Steven Burnley

Learn about the capabilities of function apps and how they are used to develop custom applications

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Course: On-Demand

Hello. In this lesson, I'll show you what Azure Functions are, how they compare to other application architectures for developing solutions, and some common scenarios where you may implement Azure Functions. Azure Functions were designed as a serverless development environment. This is different from traditional applications where developers build web applications that run on servers, usually 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These full -time web applications have to be provisioned on a specific server. Therefore, their hardware requirements are fixed and limited. Azure Functions are designed as a serverless architecture, meaning they can scale on Microsoft's Azure hardware and only are charged while they're executing. Serverless environments are very highly scalable. Because you're only paying while the function is executing, it allows developers to build things such as batch processes that only run a few times a month, or applications that need to scale heavily under high -load scenarios and build those in a way that they are only billed while they are executing. This is creating a new type of environment where individual services comprise an application. Rather than building a traditional monolithic application where all of the code is in one set of functions, you are able to divide up or disassemble your application into individual components that could run independently and you're only billed while they're executing. These serverless functions are also very flexible because they can be built in a variety of different popular programming languages. There is no limit on Azure Function development code. All of the application languages that are supported by traditional web applications or app services are also supported by functions. That includes things such as . NET, JavaScript, and Java -based applications. Finally, you will also see that complex processes can be defined through a chain of Azure logic applications or function applications that implement something called durable functions. Durable functions do not have to execute and finish in one step. They can sit and wait for other processes to complete, or they can sit and wait for human approvals to allow them to proceed. So durable functions also allow developers to implement business logic and perhaps increase scalability or performance through using things like parallelism in their backend processing. A common scenario for using a function application would be as part of a backend service of a public web application. It is common for services to be delivered to web servers through backend systems called APIs. Building a collection of function apps and exposing those as an API would allow applications such as web applications or smartphone applications to call these functions and give programmers and their corresponding applications access to the appropriate data. In this scenario, you can see a single page application running in a traditional Azure environment and accessing static data from a storage account. When this application needs dynamic data such as the contents of a user profile or the items that are available for purchase, the web application calls the API management server. The API server then is exposing a collection of function applications to provide services to the web application such as find all products. You can see the function app could interact with the Cosmos DB, retrieve that data, and send that back to the web application as a response to that function call. An alternative example of using functions is for developers to build backend services. In this case, you can see devices depositing new records into an event hub. This could be something like a scanning device saying that a product has arrived or a product has been delivered. When you track these events in an event hub, you can trigger the execution of function apps. This means that no user had to be involved in this process. When the event hub receives a new event, you can set up a trigger to execute the function app automatically and perform backend tasks such as manipulating items in a Cosmos database or manipulating records in a storage queue. Stay tuned for the next lesson where I will show you how to develop Azure functions in the Azure portal. Thanks for watching.

Advanced Provider : Steven Burnley 3 Lessons · 22m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese

Course Description

In this course, you will learn about the capabilities and architecture of function apps. Function apps are a serverless technology that allows developers to create and deploy custom applications without the overhead and expense of deploying a full app service. Traditional app services require a dedicated hosting plan and constantly incur charges. App services are the perfect platform for solutions such as public web applications that need to run all day. Function apps were created to provide developers with a scalable architecture with a pay-as-you-go billing model. The serverless architecture makes function apps more affordable and scalable than app services. Function Apps only incur billing charges while executing, which is more cost-efficient for certain applications. This alternative architecture provides developers with an efficient, scalable environment for creating batch applications or back-end services. This service-oriented architecture supports distributed application development principles and allows for flexibility in updating and reusing services from multiple applications. It's essential that developers know about function apps to develop custom applications.

What You'll Learn

Review the capabilities and architecture of Azure function apps
Examine common scenarios for using function apps
Understand the benefits and limitations of serverless applications
Create long-running transactions using durable functions
Develop functions for batch applications and back-end services

Key Takeaways

Function apps are a serverless technology that lets developers create and deploy custom applications without the overhead and expense of deploying a full app service.
Unlike traditional app services that require a dedicated hosting plan and constantly incur charges, function apps use a pay-as-you-go billing model and only incur charges while executing.
The serverless architecture makes function apps more affordable and scalable than app services for certain applications.
Function apps provide an efficient, scalable environment for creating batch applications or back-end services.
The service-oriented architecture supports distributed application development and allows flexibility in updating and reusing services across multiple applications.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will I learn in this course?

You will learn about the capabilities and architecture of function apps, examine common scenarios for using them, understand the benefits and limitations of serverless applications, and create long-running transactions using durable functions.

Who is this course for?

It is for developers, since the course states it is essential that developers know about function apps to develop custom applications.

What topics do the lessons cover?

The lessons cover exploring the capabilities of function apps, developing functions, and durable functions.

How do function apps differ from traditional app services?

Traditional app services require a dedicated hosting plan and constantly incur charges, while function apps use a serverless, pay-as-you-go billing model and only incur charges while executing, making them more affordable and scalable for certain applications.

What kinds of applications are function apps suited for?

Function apps provide an efficient, scalable environment for creating batch applications or back-end services, and the course notes app services remain suited to solutions such as public web applications that need to run all day.