Azure Functions Newsletter – February 2024
Welcome to the February 2024 edition of Azure Functions newsletter! We'll share the latest news for Azure Functions here on the Apps on Azure blog. Azure Functions monthly community live stream Join us for our upcoming live stream on February 20, 2024, at 10:00 AM PST (18:00 UTC). Tune in to hear from Eamon O'Reilly, Lily Ma, and Madhura Bharadwaj as they discuss the latest releases in Azure Functions, provide insights into building intelligent apps with OpenAI, and unveil an exciting new feature in Durable Functions. Mark your calendars for this informative session! Subscribe to the Azure Developers YouTube channel! Try out the Azure Functions OpenAI extension: https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-openai-extension Try out Distributed Tracing v2 for Durable Functions: https://aka.ms/durablefunc-dtv2 Product News Following is the list of new Azure Functions features released since October 15 2023 Areas Feature Languages GA: Support for local development on Apple Silicon Macs GA: Service Bus message settlement in isolated worker model for .NET GA: Performance optimizations for the isolated worker model in .NET GA: Support for .NET 8 in isolated worker model Preview: Support for Java 21 (Linux) Durable Functions GA: Stateful entities in Durable Functions on the isolated worker model for .NET Preview: Distributed tracing v2 for durable Functions Preview: New major version of the durable Functions extension Retirements Reminder! Check out the upcoming retirements for Azure Functions features. Follow the linked migration guides to upgrade your Functions Apps to a supported language and/or extension version. Areas Feature Languages Upgrade your Node.js 14 app to Node.js 18 or Node.js 20 before June 30 2024 Upgrade your Node.js 16 app to Node.js 18 or Node.js 20 before June 30 2024 Upgrade your Python 3.8 app to Python 3.9 or later before 14 October 2024 Extensions Azure Functions Cosmos DB extension v3 will retire Aug 31 2024 Azure Functions Service Bus extension v4 will retire Mar 31 2025 See migration guides for more details: Cosmos DB extension, Service Bus extension. (For non .NET customers, upgrade to Extension Bundles v4 to be on the latest extension. For .NET customers, upgrade the extension NuGet packages to the latest extension) Get notified when we publish future newsletters, subscribe to the Apps on Azure blog. Connect with the Azure Functions team on GitHub and Twitter.
Preview of Durable Functions Extension v3.0.0
We have just released the preview of a new major version of the Durable Functions extension! There are two major changes introduced in this release, including upgrading to the latest version of the Azure Storage SDK (a breaking change for .NET in-process apps) and the introduction of a new partition manager.
Java on Azure Functions - 2023 Update
The Azure Functions team is thrilled to share the key investments made in 2023 to enhance our Java offering on the platform and delight customers. This post will also talk about the roadmap for the next year. What’s new? [GA] Dependency Injection hooks in Java [GA] Application Insights Distributed Tracing for Java Functions [GA] Azure SQL bindings for Azure Functions Java Durable Functions enhancements Cold Start improvements Dependency Injection hooks in Java (GA) Azure Functions Java now supports the dependency injection (DI) software design pattern, which is a technique to achieve Inversion of Control (IoC) between classes and their dependencies. Azure Functions Java provides a hook to integrate with popular Dependency Injection frameworks in your Functions Apps. This gives frameworks like Spring, Quarkus, Google Guice, Dagger, etc. the ability to create the function instance and register it into their IOC container to manage your functions naturally. Read documentation and try out samples. Application Insights Distributed Tracing for Java Functions (GA) To view more data from your Java-based Azure Functions applications than is collected by default, enable the Application Insights Java 3.x agent. This agent allows Application Insights to automatically collect and correlate dependencies, logs, and metrics from popular libraries and Azure SDKs. This telemetry is in addition to the request telemetry already captured by Functions. Configure this by setting the “Recommended” collection level in the Application Insights resource associated with your Function App. By using the application map and having a more complete view of end-to-end transactions, you can better diagnose issues. You have a topological view of how systems interact along with data on average performance and error rates. You also have more data for end-to-end diagnostics. You can use the application map to easily find the root cause of reliability issues and performance bottlenecks on a per-request basis. For more advanced use cases, you can modify telemetry by adding spans, updating span status, and adding span attributes. You can also send custom telemetry by using standard APIs. You can also profile your production Java Function applications using the Application insights profiler. This feature is currently in public preview. Initial preview of the distributed tracing for Azure Functions Java had a cold start implication of 9s which was optimized to less than 1s by GA. Read documentation on how to enable this. Try it out with sample code. Azure SQL Bindings for Azure Functions Java Azure Functions Java now supports input bindings, output bindings, and a function trigger for the Azure SQL and SQL Server products. Read the documentation and check out samples to get started. Durable Functions enhancements Since Durable Functions General Availability in December 2022, the team has added new capabilities like support for restart, suspend/resume, and waiting for orchestration completion from the SDK. Check out supported application patterns and create your first durable function in Java. Get in touch with us on the Java Durable functions repository. Cold start improvements The team worked tirelessly to drastically lower the cold start numbers by optimizing the Java worker and its communication with the Functions host. Timeline percentile_Time_taken_50 percentile_Time_taken_99 January ‘23 (before cold start optimization on Java worker) 1,293.667ms 6,964ms October ‘23 (after cold start optimization on Java worker) 647ms (reduced by ~50%) 1750ms (reduced by ~75%) What’s next? In the upcoming months, we will work on supporting the latest and the greatest runtime stack version (Java 21 LTS), SDK Type bindings, custom GSON support and more. If you haven’t already tried Azure Functions Java, here is how you can get started. Create your first function Developer guide Azure Samples Tutorial with Azure Cosmos DB and Event Hubs Get in touch with us anytime by creating issues in the Azure Functions Java GitHub repository.The Durable Functions SDK for PowerShell is now in the PowerShell Gallery
We have just published the Durable Functions for PowerShell SDK in the PowerShell Gallery. This package contains several reliability, correctness, and performance improvements, and it will allow us to iterate faster on feedback and feature requests. Try it out by installing AzureFunctions.PowerShell.Durable.SDK from the PowerShell Gallery. This is a breaking change release, so make sure to read the “breaking changes” section before upgrading.Cloud-native at Build 2023
Cloud-native development is a paradigm that aims to deliver scalable, resilient, and adaptable applications that can run on any cloud platform. Microsoft's cloud-native products, such as Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Functions, and Azure DevOps, provide the tools and services to help developers build, deploy, and manage cloud-native applications with ease.
