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- Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
A practical guide that helps you progress to using modern integration methods and leverage new cloud capability models
Key Features
- Design critical hybrid integration solutions for your organization
- Gain in-depth knowledge of how to build cloud-native integration solutions
- Leverage cognitive services to build smart cloud solutions
Book Description
With more enterprises adapting cloud-based and API-based solutions, application integration has become more relevant and significant than ever before. Parallelly, Serverless Integration has gained popularity, as it helps agile organizations to build integration solutions quickly without having to worry about infrastructure costs. With Microsoft Azure's serverless offerings, such as Logic Apps, Azure Functions, API Management, Azure Event Grid and Service Bus, organizations can build powerful, secure, and scalable integration solutions with ease.
The primary objective of this book is to help you to understand various serverless offerings included within Azure Integration Services, taking you through the basics and industry practices and patterns. This book starts by explaining the concepts of services such as Azure Functions, Logic Apps, and Service Bus with hands-on examples and use cases. After getting to grips with the basics, you will be introduced to API Management and building B2B solutions using Logic Apps Enterprise Integration Pack.
This book will help readers to understand building hybrid integration solutions and touches upon Microsoft Cognitive Services and leveraging them in modern integration solutions. Industry practices and patterns are brought to light at appropriate opportunities while explaining various concepts.
What you will learn
- Learn about the design principles of Microsoft Azure Serverless Integration
- Get insights into Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Azure Event Grid and Service Bus
- Secure and manage your integration endpoints using Azure API Management
- Build advanced B2B solutions using Logic Apps, Enterprise Integration Pack
- Monitor integration solutions using tools available on the market
- Discover design patterns for hybrid integration
Who this book is for
Serverless Integration Design Patterns with Azure is for you if you are a solution architect or integration professional aiming to build complex cloud solutions for your organization. Developers looking to build next-level hybrid or cloud solutions will also find this book useful. Prior programming knowledge is necessary.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 374
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019
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Serverless Integration Design Patterns with Azure
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First published: February 2019
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ISBN 978-1-78839-923-4
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Contributors
About the authors
Abhishek Kumar works with New Zealand Trade and Enterprise as an integration and data specialist. He is a Microsoft Azure MVP with deep expertise in software development and design. He is a co-author of Robust Cloud Integration and a seasoned contributor to Microsoft blogs, forums, and events. As a technological evangelist, he is specialized in cloud-based technologies such as Azure Functions, Microsoft Graph, Logic Apps, Web API, and Cosmos DB, along with various Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) such as Salesforce, Office 365, and ServiceNow. As a technology advocate, he promotes loosely coupled solution design along with event-based programming.
Srinivasa Mahendrakar has more than 13 years' experience in the IT industry in building applications and data integration solutions using Microsoft technologies including BizTalk, SSIS, Azure Integration Services, and Azure Functions. His career roles included developer, technical lead, solution architect, and product owner, and he has been involved in building highly regarded solutions in industries such as finance, healthcare, retail, energy, and utilities. For the past three years, he has been working at BizTalk360, to build tools for modern integration solutions. Currently, he is a product director, heading up the Atomic Scope product team. He has also hosted Integration Monday and Global Integration Boot camp sessions.
About the reviewers
Lex Hegt lives with his wife Odette and two kids, Denise and Casper, near The Hague in the Netherlands. His first steps in IT date back to the mid-1980s; in 2004, he started with Microsoft Integration. Lex has worked at consultancy companies such as Ordina and Axon Olympus (now Codit NL), and all his assignments shaped him into an experienced BizTalk administrator, developer, and trainer. In 2016, Lex joined BizTalk360 as a Technical Lead for the BizTalk360 and Atomic Scope products. He also runs the Integration Monday community initiative and some community-oriented newsletters. In his spare time, Lex enjoys spending time with his family, listening to music, playing piano, goal-keeping at field hockey, and dining with good company.
Wagner Silveira is the Principal Integration Architect at Theta. Originally from Brazil, he started his IT career as a class-led instructor of Microsoft products, coming to New Zealand in 2002, where he has been working on Microsoft Integration Technologies ever since, using the Microsoft stack and technologies such as BizTalk Server, Azure Integration Services, and Azure Function to create award-winning solutions. Wagner is one of the organizers of the Auckland Connected Systems User Group (ACSUG) and Integration Downunder webcast, and member of the Global Integration Bootcamp board, helping to organize the event across the globe and in New Zealand.
Mayank Sharma is Senior Program Manager for Azure Commerce and Ecosystems at Microsoft, Redmond, with more than 15 years of industry experience. He has been with Microsoft for 5 years, worked as Project Manager for Azure Integration Services, PaaS offering integration landscape, partnering with Azure Logic Apps group. Earlier, he worked on Microsoft’s platform modernization programs, focused around cloud adoption, Hybrid integration patterns, and migration tools. Being a passionate presenter, he has also shares Microsoft’s integration case study at various conferences and events around the world. He also worked with other industry leaders including Accenture, HCL Technologies, and Fidelity, on various business transformation programs.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Serverless Integration Design Patterns with Azure
About Packt
Why subscribe?
Packt.com
Contributors
About the authors
About the reviewers
Packt is searching for authors like you
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Download the color images
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
Serverless Integration with Microsoft Azure
Introduction to serverless in the cloud
Benefits and disadvantages of serverless architecture
Azure Integration Services
Azure Logic Apps – cloud workflow engine
Azure Service Bus – cloud messaging service
Azure API Management – API gateway
Azure Functions 
Azure Event Grid – event-handling platform
Summary
Azure Functions and Enterprise Integration
Azure Functions hosting architecture
Sample Azure Function
Prerequisites for using Visual Studio
Creating dependent Azure services
Step 1 – Creating a Service Bus queue
Step 2 – Creating a Cosmos DB account and a collection
Step 3 – Creating a storage account
Creating a function app project
Creating a function
Running and debugging functions locally
Publishing Azure Functions
Understanding the components of an Azure Function
Application host file (host.json)
Application settings (local.settings.json)
Function triggers
Function bindings
Sample scenario continued
Installing the NuGet package for the Cosmos DB WebJobs extension
Adding input bindings to Inventory DB
Adding output bindings for the orders collection
Running the end-to-end sample scenario
Azure Function use cases
Important considerations when building Azure Functions
Securing application settings with Azure Key Vault
Service plan versus consumption plan
Using deployment slots
Leveraging Application Insights for monitoring
Function proxies
Durable Functions
Function chaining
Fan-out or fan-in
Async HTTP APIs
Monitoring
Human interaction
Creating a sample durable function
Installing a durable task package
Summary
Introduction to Azure Event Grid
Eventing or messaging for enterprise solutions
Characteristics of events and eventing
Event sources and event handlers
Event sources
Foreground events
Background events
Event handlers
Azure Event Grid topics
Azure Event Grid security and authentication
Webhook event delivery
Event delivery security
Event subscriptions
Publishing events through custom topics
Key authentication with code
Azure Event Grid management access control
Azure Event Grid message delivery retry and event filtering
Dead-letter events with Azure Event Grid
Event delivery status codes
Event filtering through Azure Event Grid subscription
Event type filtering
Subject filtering
Advanced filtering
Example 1 – storage events and Logic Apps single event listener
Example 2 – custom Azure Event Grid topic and event broadcast
Azure Event Grid domain for enterprise integration
Summary
Azure API Management
The API Management platform
The Azure APIM platform
API gateway
The publisher portal
The developer portal
API products
Authorization groups
Policies
Policy scopes
Logistical company ShipAnyWhere – case study
The product service
The order fulfillment service
The purchase order service
ShipAnyWhere digital transformation
Creating an APIM service
Creating REST endpoints for the ShipAnyWhere product service
Existing ShipAnyWhere service
Importing WSDL
Testing the GetProducts service method
The developer portal
APIM policies
Inbound policies
The rewrite-uri policy
The set-header policy
The set-body policy
Backend policies
Outbound policies
The control flow policy
The XML-to-JSON policy
The cross-original resource sharing (CORS) policy
Creating a SOAP pass through an API 
Creating purchase order APIs with Logic Apps and Azure Functions
Handling large messages in hybrid integration scenarios
Versioning and production testing Logic Apps
Summary
Azure Service Bus with Integration Services
Azure Service Bus use cases
Creating a Service Bus namespace
Creating a Service Bus namespace in the Azure portal
Service Bus tiers
Azure Service Bus technology offerings
Azure Service Bus architecture
Messaging with Service Bus
Message size
Message headers and properties
Service Bus queues and descriptions
Queue naming convention
Retrieving messages from a queue
Dead-lettering of Service Bus messages
Deferred message processing in Azure Service Bus
Security with an Azure Service Bus namespace
SAS authentication
Azure Service Bus topics
Subscription rules
Example 1 – Working with priority queues in Azure Service Bus
Example 2 – Working with API Management and Service Bus
Example 3 – Content-based routing based on message properties
Summary
Introduction to Logic Apps
The components of Azure Logic Apps
An overview of triggers
Recurrence triggers
HTTP triggers
Request triggers
Webhook triggers
Actions in Logic Apps
Parameters in the Logic Apps workflow template
Outputs in the Logic Apps workflow template
Example 1 – Debatching in Logic Apps with the splitOn property and Azure Functions change feed with Cosmos DB
Example 2 – Concurrency control and singleton patterns in Logic Apps with schema validation
Summary
Control Flow Actions and Custom Connectors
Logic Apps control flow actions
Conditional actions
Parallel actions
Switch control flow
Foreach action
Scope action
Do…until action
Terminate action
The workflow expression language and content types
Workflow and action tracking
Custom connectors and Cosmos graph databases
Summary
Patterns with Azure Integration Services
Azure Functions and Logic Apps
Example 1 – The batching or aggregator pattern in Logic Apps
Example 2 – Asynchronous patterns for long-running APIs
The polling pattern
The webhook pattern
Example 3 – Messages with API Management, Event Grid, Logic App, and Azure Functions
Example 4 – Session Management with Logic Apps and Service Bus
Summary
B2B/EDI Solutions for Enterprise Integration with Azure Logic Apps
Enterprise integration pack
B2B scenario
Creating integration accounts
Uploading certificates to Azure Key Vault
Creating certificates
Creating a key vault service in each resource group
Uploading the private key certificates to the key vaults
Adding certificates to an integration account
Uploading schemas and maps
Creating partners in an integration account
Creating AS2 agreements
Creating AS2 agreements in Contoso
Creating an AS2 agreement for ShipAnyWhere
Creating an X12 agreement
Creating the ContosoSendOrder Logic App
The Logic Apps B2B solution
Creating a workspace and adding the B2B solution
Associating the Log Analytics workspace with an integration account
Handling EDI batches
The ShipAnyWhereBatchReceiver Logic App
The SendX12TransactionToBatcher Logic App
Testing the scenario
B2B disaster recovery
X12/EDIFACT control ID replication Logic Apps
AS2 Message Integrity Check (MIC) replication Logic App
Summary
Hybrid Integration, BizTalk Server 2016 and an On-Premises Data Gateway
Introduction to hybrid integration
Why hybrid integration?
Introduction to the on-premises data gateway
 On-premises Data Gateway Architecture
Enabling Hybrid Integration with Microsoft BizTalk Server 2016
Azure Service Bus Relay
The Service Bus (SB) – Messaging adapter
The Logic Apps adapter
Comparison matrix
Installing and configuring Logic Apps adapters in BizTalk Server 2016
Connecting BizTalk Server 2016 with Azure Logic Apps
Step 1 – Creating Logic Apps for Cognitive Services
Step 2 – Typed polling with the WCF adapter
Connecting to a SQL database
Creating a two-way send port for Logic Apps
Connecting Azure Logic Apps with BizTalk Server 2016
IIS configuration for Logic App adapters
Consuming the WCF service in BizTalk 2016
Summary
Intelligence in Integration Using Azure Cognitive Services
AI
Machine learning
Neural network
Machine learning and digital transformation
Microsoft and the democratization of AI
The Microsoft AI platform
Azure AI
Cognitive Services APIs
Conversational services
Data Science Virtual Machine (DSVM)
Comprehensive platform and tools
Intelligence in serverless integration
Computer Vision APIs
The Analyze Image API
Optical character recognition (OCR) to JSON
Face API
Text Analytics APIs
Language understanding APIs
Natural language model
Case study – ShipAnywhere feedback analysis
Provisioning the Text Analytics API service instance
Noting down the connection name and key
Creating logic apps
Summary
DevOps for Azure Integration
Benefits of DevOps
DevOps for integration
Naming convention of integration artifacts
ARM templates
Creating an ARM template using Visual Studio
Azure Event Grid and DevOps
Azure API Management and DevOps with Git version control
Azure Functions with DevOps
Azure Function continuous integration and deployment
Logic Apps continuous integration and deployment with DevOps
Summary
Monitoring for Azure Integration
Types of monitoring
Manual monitoring
Automated monitoring
Different types of monitoring
Availability monitoring
Health monitoring
Performance monitoring
Threshold monitoring
Sending notifications of issues or events
Benefits of monitoring
Improving availability
Business insights
Usage trends for upscaling and downscaling
Identifying performance bottlenecks
Azure integration service monitoring
Azure Logic Apps monitoring with the Azure portal and Azure log analytics
Logic App runs and trigger history
Logic Apps notifications and alerts
Azure Log Analytics and Logic Apps
Azure Functions monitoring with Application Insights
Application Insights configuration for a new function app
Manually connecting an Application Insights resource to your function app
Monitoring functions with Application Insights
Azure API Management monitoring with Application Insights
Azure Service Bus monitoring with Serverless360
Serverless360 monitoring features
Threshold violation alarms
Health check alarms
Data monitoring
Managing composite serverless applications in Serverless360
Associating an Azure subscription
Creating a composite serverless application
Adding Azure serverless components to the application
Setting up monitoring in Serverless360
Creating an alarm
Mapping artifacts to the alarm
Summary
Other Books You May Enjoy
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Preface
With the surge in cloud adoption, serverless integration has gained popularity, as have Microsoft Azure's offerings, such as Azure Logic Apps, Functions, API Management, Event Grid, and Service Bus. These serverless platforms allow enterprises to build powerful, secure, and scalable integration solutions in the cloud. The primary goal of Serverless Integration Design Patterns with Azure is to teach you how to work with enterprise design patterns, and how to connect services and platforms hosted in the cloud or on premises.
This book builds your understanding of Azure Integration Services by providing you with hands-on labs to test and improve your skills and knowledge of cloud integration and the different connecting platforms in Azure. As well as Azure, you'll also learn about the Microsoft Cloud Platform Integration Framework, along with various other architecture design principles that can be applied when connecting systems.
Who this book is for
Serverless Integration Design Patterns with Azure is intended for solution architects and integration professionals aiming to build complex cloud solutions and next-generation integration patterns using the Microsoft Azure platform. This books covers cloud and hybrid integration patterns using serverless platforms such as Logic Apps, Azure Functions, API Management, Event Grid, and Service Bus.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Serverless Integration with Microsoft Azure, provides an overview of Azure Integration Services and what this means for organizations in terms of their digital transformation roadmap. This chapter introduces serverless platforms and outlines the key advantages and benefits for organization moving their enterprise IT workload's into the cloud. We have also given brief introduction to Integration services, such as Logic Apps, API Management, Service Bus, Event Grid, and Azure Functions.
Chapter 2, Azure Functions and Enterprise Integration, looks at Azure Functions. They are the linchpin in Azure's serverless offerings. With a range of triggers and bindings available, developers will see how quick and easy it is to spin up Azure Functions for given problems or APIs. Microsoft has made it possible for users to either use the Azure portal, Visual Studio, or Visual Studio Code for development.
Chapter 3, Introduction to Azure Event Grid, closely examines the capabilities of Azure Event Grid and considers how we can utilize Event Grid features in a modern integration framework. We cover multiple routing options with Event Grid and experiment with a few sample exercises for Event Grid topics and domains.
Chapter 4, Azure API Management, looks at how Azure API Management fits into the overall enterprise application landscape and can help to secure APIs and Logic Apps.
Chapter 5, Azure Service Bus with Integration Services, introduces Azure Service Bus and explains how we can use code, along with Logic Apps and Azure Functions bindings, to create an integration layer in Microsoft Azure. We also cover some design patterns, focusing on parameters and priority queues.
Chapter 6, Introduction to Logic Apps, introduces Logic Apps and demonstrates applications of the different types of triggers and actions that are available through the designer and code views. You'll learn how to implement some complex design patterns with Logic Apps and associated software and services. This chapter has also highlights aspects of the Cosmos graph database.
Chapter 7, Control Flow Actions and Custom Connectors, discusses the different control flow actions available in Logic Apps to create robust workflows to connect disparate systems. You'll learn how to write with the Logic Apps expression language, using Logic Apps designer and with code editor. Finally, we discuss how you can leverage your existing API as a custom connector in Logic Apps, and how to build your own custom connector for Logic Apps.
Chapter 8, Patterns with Azure Integration Services, covers how you can perform exception handling in Logic Apps, along with multiple design patterns such as sequential message flow, webhooks for event-based architecture patterns, and simple batching with Logic Apps.
Chapter 9, B2B/EDI Solutions for Enterprise Integration with Azure Logic Apps, explains how creating B2B flows is easy when using Logic Apps and an integration account. In the world of Microsoft integration, customers are slowly but steadily moving from BizTalk-based on-premises integrations to Logic Apps-based integrations. EDI/AS2-based integrations are moving fastest to the cloud out of all integrations out there.
Chapter 10, Hybrid Integration Using BizTalk Server 2016 and an On-Premises Data Gateway, explores the capabilities of Logic Apps and how they can be applied to typical hybrid integration scenarios using Logic Apps adapters. Logic Apps provide connectivity to on-premises applications. We have shown how we can connect on-premises BizTalk and a wide variety of services, such as SQL and WCF services, hosted within corporate networks with no access to the cloud.
Chapter 11, Intelligence in Integration Using Azure Cognitive Services, explains terminology related to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks. We look at Microsoft and the democratization of AI, the Microsoft AI platform, and applications of AI in serverless integration. We also examine a case study on sentiment analysis.
Chapter 12, DevOps for Azure Integration, considers DevOps practices in Azure Integration. We list why DevOps processes are necessary for modern integration, along with how you can automate Azure Integration Services using a DevOps pipeline.
Chapter 13, Monitoring for Azure Integration, discusses enabling monitoring for Azure Integration Services. We walk through the process of enabling monitoring for Logic Apps, API Management, Azure Functions, and Service Bus. In this chapter, we also cover how you can use a third-party product, Serverless360, to effectively monitor the messaging layer for your entire enterprise.
To get the most out of this book
To get the most out of this book, we assume that you have the prerequisite knowledge of Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code, along with prior programming experience with C# and JSON.
Download the example code files
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Conventions used
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."
A block of code is set as follows:
[CosmosDB(databaseName:"Sales", collectionName:"Orders", ConnectionStringSetting ="dbConnectionString")] IAsyncCollector<PurchaseOrder> writeResultsToCosmos
When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:
[CosmosDB(databaseName:"Sales", collectionName:"Orders", ConnectionStringSetting ="dbConnectionString")]
IAsyncCollector<PurchaseOrder> writeResultsToCosmos
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select System info from the Administration panel."
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Serverless Integration with Microsoft Azure
In the current era of cloud adoption, enterprises are heavily investing in new platforms, services, and frameworks. They are also moving closer to a customer-focused approach with new offerings to new customers in a geographically extended customer base. Gone are the days of queuing outside of shops in order to get a new device or standing in line to perform a single bank transaction. With new business models and technological innovation, everything is now available at our fingertips. We have witnessed this with the rise of endless online platforms such as LinkedIn, Netflix, Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
This book will explain how integration has changed across different industries, with more cloud adoption and innovation occurring in the software sector. Throughout this book, we will use step-by-step processes to explain key integration concepts, and each chapter will dive into the details of the individual service components of the Microsoft Azure Integration stack. Whether you are new to integration or are experienced in the integration field, each chapter will provide you with valuable technical information that can be implemented within your enterprise solutions.
As the title suggests, this chapter will give a basic overview of Microsoft Azure Integration Services and how it has evolved from being an on-premises integration stack to a cloud-first integration framework. So, fasten your seatbelt and join us on this great journey of integration!
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
Introduction to serverless platforms
Advantages and disadvantages of serverless architecture
Introduction to Azure Integration Services
Components of Azure Integration Services
Introduction to serverless in the cloud
You might have heard the buzzword serverless previously, perhaps through your colleagues or cloud advocate. You must have wondered what this means for your enterprise or for you as developer, architect, or DevOps associate. However, do not get confused by the word serverless; it does not refer to the process of running your code without servers.
For an enterprise, serverless actually means managing the enterprise's IT workload in cloud without having to make vast investments in setting up an infrastructure to run products and services. For new and existing organizations, a serverless platform means that an enterprise need only be billed for consumed resources.
For developers, serverless means writing efficient code that makes the most of the resources available. Cloud computing has evolved over time, and we need to appreciate this when making applications for the cloud. The following diagram describes the journey of cloud computing:
Throughout this journey, Microsoft has invested heavily in making its infrastructure more suited to customer requirements in a much more efficient manner. With Azure, Microsoft's own cloud service, there are numerous platforms and services that let you get started without having to consider the internal infrastructure and any starting costs. These platforms include Azure Functions, Logic Apps, Cosmos DB, Data Factory, API Management, and many more. In this book, we will concentrate on Microsoft's serverless integration stack and how you can take advantage of these serverless platforms in the real world.
Benefits and disadvantages of serverless architecture
In this section, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of having a serverless environment in your organization. As the name suggests, a serverless environment provides you with abstraction from operating systems, servers, and infrastructure. This comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages. For example, if you are using Function as Service (FaaS) or an integration workflow, you only need to concern yourself with development implementation rather than with procurement of hardware and the building of infrastructure to run functions or integration workflows. This allows an organization to concentrate more on business requirements and innovation in the sector, rather than external factors such as infrastructure setup, firewalls, hardware procurement, and networking.
The following diagram is a representation of a serverless FaaS environment in the cloud, where auto scaling is catered for through multiple execution runtime environments:
As there are multiple layers to this discussion, let's discuss how you and your organization benefit from a serverless application architecture:
Event-driven architecture
: As we move closer to a serverless architecture, we also move closer to reactive asynchronous design patterns. For example, think of your application reacting to an event of your choice instead of polling for all events and then filtering for the required data. This has huge benefits for your organization in terms of the optimization of available resources and minimizing the overall application running cost in the cloud.
Language of your choice
: Organizations often struggle to find the right set of development resources that work for their business requirements. You might be a .NET developer or Node.js expert; these serverless platforms provide us with a platform in which language and framework are not constraints and you can write your own code with the language of your choice. This is one of the amazing benefits of utilizing serverless environments for your organization.
Microbilling
: A business cares about expenditure and innovation. When you think about a business owner's prospective costs, optimization is one of the biggest challenges in today's world. Most cloud vendors have worked through this challenge to provide better experiences to businesses by introducing a consumption-based pricing model. As more and more organizations are moving to the cloud, there has been a huge reduction in consumption across all cloud vendors. This helps
cloud vendors
to maximize their resource utilization.
Scale on demand
: Serverless environments are highly flexible in terms of scaling. As each serverless platform runs on a separate container, it is easy for cloud vendors to scale services as per demand. With auto scaling enabled, we need only worry about the best implementation of our applications and software, rather than about making applications to suit infrastructural requirements.
Geolocation
: Most serverless platforms can run across multiple regions. This is another key advantage when moving to the cloud. With geolocation features, businesses can meet customer requirements across different regions the world over without experiencing any latency or user experience problems.
Better monitoring and priorities
: With great monitoring capabilities in serverless environments, the DevOps team can now concentrate more on best practices for application development, deployment, and innovation, rather than spending endless nights supporting the infrastructure. This has benefited organizations in remaining competitive against market changes and innovation in their respective sectors.
We just covered some of the benefits of serverless environments – those were just a few of the many that there are. Now, let's discuss some disadvantages of serverless platforms:
Vendor-specific resources
: Most serverless platforms are managed and controlled by specified cloud vendors. This has potential drawbacks if you think of moving your resources to different hosting platforms or different cloud vendors. When using serverless platforms, you are locked into a specific implementation design that may not allow for your organization's flexibility requirements, and there may also be compatibility issues regarding business regions and changing pricing models.
Governance
: Most serverless platforms provide you with frameworks with easy startup, but there is a potential drawback to this. If you do not follow the right practices from the start, then you can put your business at risk. An example of this would be storing your database connection in your configuration file rather than using secure configuration storage or not implementing security for your outbound APIs. Though these are considered best practices, sometimes teams tend to move toward unsecured architecture patterns to meet business requirements.
Monitoring across different cloud platforms
: If your organization uses multiple cloud platforms, then each vendor will likely have a different set of monitoring implementations. This drawback means it can be harder for enterprises to maintain cross-cloud platform resources.
Infrastructure insights
: With serverless solution patterns, you can lose insights into the overall infrastructure setup. To
gain
maximum resource utilization, most cloud vendors share resources across multiple application implementations. This has the potential drawback of you not being aware of neighboring systems or encountering application noise, which might hinder the performance of your application.
So, we have given you a glimpse of the pros and cons of serverless environments. These are what you need to consider when you port your new services to serverless environments. In the following sections, we will concentrate on Microsoft's serverless offerings, discussing their concepts before moving on to their implementation logic.
Azure Integration Services
In the current era of digital transformation and cloud-first strategy, organizations host their applications both in the cloud and in on-premises environments in a hybrid model. These organizations often struggle to find the right platform to connect these disparate systems.
To address this problem, Microsoft has heavily invested in building an integration framework to run in Azure; it is called Azure Integration Services. Azure Integration Services comprises a set of different services and platforms in Azure, such as Azure Logic Apps, Service Bus, Azure Event Grid, and API Management. Taking the capabilities and power of multiple serverless platforms, Azure Integration Services now serves a variety of customer sectors, ranging from healthcare and the automobile industry to governmental organizations and insurance companies.
Before we dive into a detailed explanation, let's understand what Azure Integration Services is and why you should bother with it. As we've already explained, Azure Integration Services is an umbrella for a number of Azure serverless integration platforms, and you will be surprised at how well these offerings work in harmony; for instance, by how well Azure Functions integrates with Azure Logic Apps to improve an organization's workflow. In the coming chapters, we'll get into more detail about all this, but for now, we'll just concentrate on familiarizing ourselves with the basics of these individual offerings, including what they are and a bit about how they work together to form a cloud-first integration solution.
Granular integration design and microservice patterns have changed the face of modern integration. Now, modern integration is not about learning a specific platform or mastering a product, but is more about getting the best out of connecting platforms. For example, if you want to automate your business workflow, then you can use Azure Logic Apps to build workflows in the cloud by utilizing a reactive programming model along with Azure Event Grid capabilities. Another example might be securing your external-facing endpoint. In that case, API Management is for you. If this confuses you, do not worry; we will learn all of these techniques and best practices throughout this book.
The following diagram describes what you are going to master in this book. We also urge you to go through the Microsoft Azure Integration Services whitepaper at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/resources/azure-integration-services/en-us/:
Since we have now looked at an overview of Azure Integration Services, let's discuss the individual offerings separately. We will start with AzureLogic Appsand then move on to other services such as API Management,Service Bus,Azure Functions, andAzureEvent Grid.
If you are already familiar with integration frameworks in the cloud, then we urge you to read these about services' individual capabilities in this chapter. This will help you to get a broader overview of the different platforms and services available within the Azure Integration Services umbrella for connecting enterprise-wide applications with better design patterns.
Azure Logic Apps – cloud workflow engine
Azure Logic Apps is part of the Azure Integration Services family and is an integration workflow engine in the cloud. With Azure Logic Apps, you can get started in no time and automate your workflows as required. With Azure Logic Apps, you can build highly scalable workflows in the cloud by taking advantage of more than 200 connectors (more than 200 were available at the time of writing):
Logic Apps works natively in a serverless fashion. What this means is that, like other serverless platforms, Logic Apps is also highly extensible in terms of micro-billing, scaling on demand, no infrastructure cost, a high level of monitoring, and the ability to bring your own APIs into Logic Apps and use it as a standard connector for building your integration solution.
Organizations are also reaping the benefits of flexible pricing models for Logic Apps. With Logic Apps, you are only charged for your usage (consumption-based pricing model); alternatively, you can opt for the Integration Service Environment (ISE) and pay a fixed price for your enterprise integration environment. ISE is a great step toward running an enterprise integration environment within a client's own virtual network, while still enjoying all the benefits of the cloud. We will learn more about ISE capabilities in later chapters.
Azure Service Bus – cloud messaging service
Azure Service Bus is a multi-tenant, cloud-based service that sends and receives information between application and services. It is the oldest and most widely used member of Azure Integration Services.
As Azure Service Bus promotes asynchronous programming and works in a publish-subscribe model, various enterprises use its capability for message routing to provide decoupling for their existing solution. Azure Service Bus has grown over the years, experiencing success stories and supporting multiple languages for developers. With Azure Service Bus, you can either use queues for First-In-First-Out (FIFO) messaging or use topics to work with a publish-subscribe model.
Some of the languages that are supported for sending and receiving messages from a Service Bus queue are listed here:
.NET
Java
Node.js
Python
Ruby
The Azure portal
The Azure CLI
Azure PowerShell
The following list notes the languages supported for communication with Service Bus topics/subscriptions:
.NET
Java
Node.js
PHP
Python
Ruby
The Azure portal
The Azure CLI
Azure PowerShell
Azure API Management – API gateway
Azure API Management is a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) framework for publishing an organization's internal and external APIs. With Azure API Management, you can secure your internal or external APIs, or compose your own API that talks to your backend system to cater to the needs of client applications.
Like other serverless platforms, API Management also comes with a variety of pricing models. For example, you can run an instance of API Management with a consumption plan, or you can pay a fixed price to utilize services in both the standard and premium plans. You can integrate API Management as part of your ISE:
People are often confused by the role of API Management. API Management is not only the façade layer preceding your APIs, but also a security door to your enterprise data. A better solution design should also cater to the security aspect of talking to internal or external services.
We have seen stories where organizations continue creating a plethora of APIs to connect their internal or external business partners, without paying much attention to security, content-type handling, caching, and so on. Often, these service behaviors are managed on an individual basis, which is not suited to a highly scalable infrastructure.
In Chapter 4, Azure API Management, we will discuss these aspects in more detail, along with industry best practices, so that you can get the most out of your investment and make your organization more agile and secure.
Azure Functions
Azure Functions embraces a code-first approach to developing enterprise-grade solutions in Azure. Like other serverless platforms, Azure Functions is a powerful framework available in Microsoft Azure, where you can run your code on demand and pay only for your resource consumption.
The Azure Functions runtime supports multiple languages. When developing custom code for integration, developers can use the language of their choice, such as .NET, Node.js, Java, PowerShell, and more. When it comes to hosting, you can host your Azure Functions in any environment, such as Kubernetes, Windows, or a Linux environment. With various available application bindings, Azure Functions also follow a reactive programming model and can be used in a plethora of use cases. On the development front, you can either use the Azure portal to develop your Azure Function, or you can embrace development environments such as Microsoft Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code:
You can combine the workflow capabilities of Logic Apps and the code-first execution of Azure Functions to develop enterprise-grade integration solutions without worrying about the infrastructure implementation. Alternatively, you can develop your lightweight API though Azure Functions and leverage the capabilities of API Management to expose your API to the outside world.
When you have a huge workload running on an Azure Functions runtime, you can concern yourself with latency rather than changing your design patterns. There are also various pricing models for Azure Functions, such as fixed-price application plans or the premium runtime environment. All of these considerations are essential architecture decisions, and this book will help you to get the most out of Azure Functions through a chapter dedicated entirely to it.
We also suggest that as you go through this book, you keep yourself informed by reading the Azure Functions documentation: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/azure/azure-functions/.
The Azure Functions runtime is a great platform for processing data, offering capabilities to integrate systems through input and output bindings, while also suiting big data ingestion use cases such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Azure Data Factory.
Azure Event Grid – event-handling platform
Azure Event Grid is a fully managed, intelligent event-routing service. With Azure Event Grid, enterprise applications can leverage an event-driven programming model to build reactive interfaces that can be used to connect external or internal applications. Using Azure Event Grid as a middleware messaging layer for application and interface integration helps organizations to optimize the performance of their software resources with a notification push design pattern, rather than a data pull operation model. Azure Event Grid works with a publish-subscribe mechanism, where you can have one or more event publishers and with each event, there can be one or more subscribers consuming the events.
In the following example, Logic Apps acts as a subscriber to the event published to Azure Event Grid. Events are routed to a Logic Apps endpoint in real time, and once an event is posted to the Logic App endpoint, a Logic Apps workflow sends an auto-triggered email using a Logic Apps-managed API connector for Office 365:
Azure Event Grid is the perfect match for Logic Apps and Azure Functions, and you can leverage events emitted from your environment or external resources to react in real time, instead of consuming resources through a polling-based mechanism. Various blogs and articles have been written on how to use the capabilities of Azure Event Grid, along with other connecting Azure resources such as Data Factory, blob storage, Service Bus, and external services.
This book
