Understanding Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event-driven serverless compute platform. You can build and debug locally and later deploy to the Microsoft Azure cloud. Functions can be implemented in many languages, not just C# and .NET. It has extensions for Visual Studio 2022 and Visual Studio Code and a command-line tool.

But first, you might be wondering, “How is it possible to have a service without a server?”

Serverless does not literally mean there is no server. What serverless means is a service without a permanently running server, and usually that means not running for most of the time or running with low resources and scaling up dynamically when needed. This can save a lot of costs.

For example, organizations often have business functions that only need to run once per hour, once per month, or on an ad hoc basis. Perhaps the organization prints checks (cheques in England) to pay its employees at the end of the month. Those checks might need...