Preface
This book covers the most common design patterns and frameworks involved in modern cloud-based and
distributed software architectures. It discusses when and how to use each pattern by providing you with
practical real-world scenarios.
This book also presents techniques and processes such as DevOps, microservices, Kubernetes, con-
tinuous integration, and cloud computing, so that you can have a best-in-class software solution
developed and delivered for your customers. This book will help you to understand the product that your
customer wants from you. It will guide you to deliver and solve the biggest problems you can face during
development. It also covers the do’s and don’ts that you need to follow when you manage your
application in a cloud-based environment. You will learn about different architectural approaches, such as
layered architecture, onion architecture, service-oriented architecture, microservices, sin- gle-page
applications, and cloud architecture, and understand how to apply them to specific business
requirements.
Finally, you will deploy code in remote environments or on the cloud using Azure. All the concepts in this
book will be explained with the help of real-world practical use cases where design principles make the
difference when creating safe and robust applications. By the end of the book, you will be able to develop
and deliver highly scalable and secure enterprise-ready applications that meet the end customers’
business needs.
It is worth mentioning that this book will not only cover the best practices that a software architect should
follow for developing C# and .NET solutions, but it will also discuss all the environments that you need to
master to develop a software product according to the latest trends, such as Kubernetes, ASP.NET Core,
and Blazor.
This third edition was improved in terms of code and explanations, and was adapted to the new op-
portunities offered by C# 10 and .Net 6.
Moreover, we also added a lot of completely new content, including a complete description of gRPC usage
in .NET projects, more focus on portable microservices with a chapter dedicated to the .NET imple- mentation of
worker microservices, and another one dedicated to the ASP.NET core implementation of frontend microservices. We
also explained how to interact with the RabbitMQ message broker form .NET.
We also added a short introduction to artificial intelligence and machine learning using ML.NET, and a
chapter on native clients that also includes a preliminary description of .NET MAUI preview.
xxii Preface Who this book is for
This book is for any software architect who wishes to improve their knowledge related to Azure Solu- tions
with C#.NET. It is also for engineers and senior developers who are aspiring to become architects or wish to build
enterprise applications with the .NET stacks. Experience with C# and .NET is required.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, Understanding the Importance of Software Architecture, explains the basics of software archi-
tecture. This chapter will give you the right mindset to face customer requirements, and then select the
right tools, patterns, and frameworks.
Chapter 2, Non-Functional Requirements, guides you in an important stage of application development,
that is, collecting and accounting for all constraints and goals that the application must fulfill, such as
scalability, availability, resiliency, performance, multithreading, interoperability, and security.
Chapter 3, Documenting Requirements with Azure DevOps, describes techniques for documenting re-
quirements, bugs, and other information about your applications. While most of the concepts are general,
the chapter focuses on the usage of Azure DevOps and GitHub.
Chapter 4, Deciding on the Best Cloud-Based Solution, gives you a wide overview of the tools and resources
available in the cloud, and on Microsoft Azure. Here, you will learn how to search for the right tools and
resources and how to configure them to fulfill your needs.
Chapter 5, Applying a Microservice Architecture to Your Enterprise Application, offers a broad overview of
microservices and Docker containers. Here, you will learn how the microservices-based architecture takes
advantage of all the opportunities offered by the cloud and you will see how to use microservices to achieve flexibility,
high throughput, and reliability in the cloud. You will learn how to use containers and Docker to mix different
technologies in your architecture as well as make your software platform independent.
Chapter 6, Azure Kubernetes Service, describes the Azure implementation of Kubernetes, which is a de
facto standard for microservices orchestration. Here you will package and deploy microservices
applications on Kubernetes.
Chapter 7, Interacting with Data in C# – Entity Framework Core, explains in detail how your application
can interact with various storage engines with the help of Object-Relational Mappings (ORMs) and, in
particular, with Entity Framework Core 6.0.
Chapter 8, How to Choose Your Data Storage in the Cloud, describes the main storage engines available
in the cloud and in Microsoft Azure. Here, you will learn how to choose the best storage engines to
achieve the read/write parallelism you need, how to configure them, and how to interact with them from
your C# code.
Chapter 9, Working with Azure Functions, describes the serverless model of computation and how to use it in the
Azure Cloud. Here, you will learn how to allocate cloud resources just when they are needed to run some
computation, thus paying only for the actual computation time.
