Azure Cloud Services: Differences between Azure Function and Logic App
Microsoft Azure, offers many cloud services among them Azure Function and Logic App, as a cloud user, we should know when to use Azure Function and Logic App.
A good thing is both looks similar in the first view so I thought just post a small post so that it's easy to understand quickly. Though the details of all services are available on https://docs.microsoft.com so for more details and how to create them please visit https://docs.microsoft.com but the below point will just provide you with a quick view for what to use which one.
What is Azure Function?
Azure Function is a running small piece of code in the cloud. It is code being triggered by an event. It helps us to use serverless applications on Azure cloud. We can use the development language of our choices like C#, F#, Java, Node.js or PHP.
In summary, we can say that,
- It is code being triggered by an event,
- It can be developed locally, that is a plus point to maximize our productivity,
- For complex logic, Azure function is the best option
- It can run locally too
What is Logic App?
An Azure Cloud service which helps to automate and orchestrate tasks for our applications. Logic App helps to create "serverless" apps and solutions.
Logic App simplifies the design of scalable solutions for our applications. Logic app workflow starts with a trigger, it fires when a specific event happens. We can build our Logic visually with Logic Apps Designer available on Azure.
An Apps Designer looks like,
Few examples of workloads that we can automate with the logic app are,
- Process & route orders across on-premises systems or in cloud services,
- Send email notifications,
- Transfer uploaded files from an SFTP or FTP server in Azure Storage
- Monitor tweets for a specific subject, analyze the sentiment and create alerts or tasks for items that need review and many more as per your need.
In summary, we can say,
- It is a workflow triggered by an event,
- It runs only in the cloud,
- We cannot be build, test or run Logic App locally,
- It is better suited for those works which require processing,
A small video is shown below, to understand more,
Hope it will help if someone looking for the decision for what to use them Azure Function and Logic App.