Microsoft Azure provides a complete RAD (Rapid Application Development) platform to develop applications that are websites, Web APIs, logic applications, and Mobile Apps under one umbrella known as Azure App Services. In this section, we will explore all the app models provided in Azure App Services, and understand the unique capability of each and when to use what to achieve a particular scenario.
Azure App Services contains four types of application models, which are as follows:
- Web Apps
- API Apps
- Mobile Apps
- Logic Apps
The benefit of Azure App Services is that you just need to focus on your application business requirement rather than going into the low-level details of plumbing servers, defining worker roles or web roles, and so on. You can choose the app model that fits your requirement and develop your application on the fly.
Azure provides App Services using App Service Fabric, which abstracts the server and the underlying resources through App Service Fabric. App Services provides certain capabilities which make creating applications simpler. These capabilities include authentication and authorization, scaling, a hybrid model that enables connecting to on-premise resources like the database running in your own organization, continuous integration to deploy applications from different source controls such as Git or TFS on every check-in, and support for troubleshooting. Consider the following figure:
