Is there any integration between CosmosDB and Api Apps? I'm kinda new in Azure and I don't really understand which is the best approach.
My problem is that I am working on an IoT Project which gets data from the IoT Hub, passes it to a Function that sends it to the CosmosDB which then would need to be consumed by a Frontend. A pretty standard case.
I would usually create a backend to place between the database and the frontend but I really can't understand which is the best way to do it in Azure. Should I use the Api Apps or the integrated SQL Apis that are provided with CosmosDB? Are the Api Apps comparable to "containers" for my backend or do they have any other use other than keeping my code in a cloud machine?
Thanks a lot in advance!
You can't (well, shouldn't) have your frontend to directly call the database so you need a middle layer of some sort.
Creating an API could be one of the ways you go about it but based on your use-case, I would go with an HTTP Trigger Azure Function which would be the API that exposes the data.
You can then use the Cosmos DB Input Binding to retrieve the object you want to return and simply return the JSON of it.
Related
I've been working on developing an API to serve a machine learning model using Azure Machine Learning (AML) webservice deployments on a Kubernetes target as outlined here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/machine-learning/service/how-to-deploy-and-where#prepare-to-deploy
My particular use case requires more than simple scoring of data through the model. The API needs to have multiple endpoints to perform different actions related to the model. For example, an endpoint to upload data, an endpoint to delete data, an endpoint to list existing data, an endpoint to score previously uploaded data, an endpoint to change preprocessing parameters, etc...
I can build all of this logic, but I am struggling with the fact that AML web services only provides one endpoint (The service URI ending in "/score"). Is there a way to add more endpoints to an AML service? For example, I would like to have a way for users to be able to POST, GET, DELETE, PUT "/data", GET "/predictions", and POST, GET, DELETE, PUT "/parameters", etc..
Is there a way to do this in AML or is this not the right tool for what I am trying to accomplish? Is there a better solution within Azure that is more suited for my needs?
Thank you!
Azure ML allows controlled rollout/traffic splitting, but doesn't directly support your API design.
I might need to know more about your use case to make a recommendation. Are you looking at implementing incremental learning? What is the motivation for separate endpoints?
-Andon
Your proposal seems like a stateful web server which is more than a REST API service. For example, you need to keep a piece of logic to maintain "ids" of data: if there are two POST /data calls with different data, and the DELETE /data need to operate on the proper one. This is much more than a single performance optimized machine learning service.
I would recommend you creating a separate server with all these logic pieces and only reach Azure Machine Learning service whenever you need it. You could also build a cache in your service to only call Azure ML service when a new data coming in or the local cache expired. It will save you additional money from Azure :-)
I am trying to learn Azure Functions by creating a bot that checks the stock prices. Ticker prices should be obtained using the BitMex API over a websocket.
Since Azure Functions currently do not directly support websockets, what implementation would you suggest I use?
There are many SignalR examples , but they all involve your own code forwarding data to SignalR in some way. I need SignalR (or whatever solution) to get the data from a foreign server via API.
The solution must preferably be serverless.
I've been searching for some time now for a way to interact with our Salesforce org easily through Azure functions and have been coming up dry. I guess where I am confused is that through Azure Logic Apps I can pretty simply connect into Salesforce and post data through them and I assume on their backend they must have some sort of built in connector to Salesforce.
Is this a package somewhere that I can utilize in Azure functions? This would simplify so much of what we are trying to accomplish with some of our integrations.
There isn't a built in Salesforce binding for Azure Functions, but one option you do have is to invoke your Logic Apps workflow from Azure Functions with the relevant payload, which would allow you to leverage all the built in connectors they have.
You don't really need any fancy connector.
For most use cases, you can use the Salesforce REST API:
https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_rest.meta/api_rest/intro_rest.htm
You can use Postman to test this API and get code samples which could easily be adapted to your Function App:
https://www.postman.com/salesforce-developers/workspace/salesforce-developers/collection/12721794-67cb9baa-e0da-4986-957e-88d8734647e2?ctx=documentation
But be careful!
Salesforce limits your API calls and it is very easy to blow these limits.
The naïve approach would be to post one record at a time. Instead, try to collect as many records as possible and post them all at once.
If Salesforce does not need the data immediately, you can build a cache that will store data somewhere else (e.g. a MongoDb) and then periodically forward the data to Salesforce after it has been allowed to accumulate to some threshold quantity and/or a certain amount of time has elapsed.
DocumentDB on Azure can besides the data hold JavaScript app logic in stored procedures, trigger and user defined functions.
If the app logic is computationally fairly simple (or even if it is not) would it then be a usable solution to have the entire backend in the DocumentDB instance and then have the client apps connecting directly via the DocumentDB REST interface? Or am I missing something in terms of security performance here?
Yes, there are scenarios where you don't need a middle tier and directly perform queries from your javascript client to the DocumentDB.
However, you don't want to expose a Master key to the client, instead you wan't to work with Resource tokens, thus you need a small middle tier service that issue a timebound token.
Also see Securing access to DocumentDB data.
We need to write a very quick web application hosted on azure. Backed by sql database. I kind of hoping we don't need to start creating a full webapi project with visual studio - routing, EF etc. It would be great if azure could provide a rest api for my database.
I think dreamfactory might be doing this. But I tried to use their free trial but it didn't allow sql server unless you sign up.
I would have thought this would be a standard requirement for small apps.
If what you mean by "rest API for my database" is the possibility to use JSON documents against it, then you should definitely look at documentDB
It provides:
JSON based document access and indexing,
Low latency & scaling,
Support for mongoDB driver
To complement this answer, DocumentDB is also capable to be accessed using client-side JS as shown here but only with specific Windows 8/10 sdks
So bottom line is: DocumentDB can't be directly accessed.
If DocumentDB serves your purpose and CORS is the only issue then you can use Azure API Management as a gateway between ui/js and back-end DocDB. CORS can be enabled at APIM with a policy expression.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/api-management/
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/azure/7689d277-8abe-472a-a78c-e6d4bd43455d#CORS