Understanding Azure Functions

Azure Functions is a part of the so-called serverless components that are available in the Azure cloud. Before you start learning about this service, you will have to understand what serverless really means. Initially, you might think that this concept implies no servers at all, but you will quickly reevaluate your way of thinking (as we are still quite far away from not using any kind of machine for our applications and workloads).

Being "serverless"

You can easily find many different articles describing the term "serverless"—to be honest, I would like to avoid promoting a single correct definition. That's because this topic is currently so fuzzy that it is hard to find the best description. However, my goal is to give you some hints and best practices that will enable you to understand this term in a way that makes the most sense to you.

Note that this chapter refers to serverless as a Function-as-a-Service (FaaS...