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4.1.2. Develop Solutions that Use Azure Cosmos DB

First Principle: Azure Cosmos DB provides a globally distributed, multi-model database service. Its core purpose is to deliver low-latency access and high availability at global scale for applications requiring seamless user experiences worldwide, enabling elastic scalability and diverse data models.

What It Is: Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s globally distributed, multi-model database service, purpose-built for applications demanding low-latency access and high availability at global scale. It enables developers to deliver seamless user experiences worldwide, with single-digit millisecond response times and 99.999% availability for multi-region deployments.

Visual: "Azure Cosmos DB Global Distribution"
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Key characteristics:
  • "Global distribution": Instantly replicate data across any Azure region, supporting "active-active access" and "disaster recovery" with automatic failover.
  • "Multi-model APIs": "Cosmos DB" supports several data models and APIs, letting you choose the best fit for your application's needs.
    • "Core (SQL) API": For "JSON document data", using SQL-like queries.
    • "MongoDB API": For "MongoDB"-compatible applications, using familiar drivers and tools.
    • "Cassandra API": For wide-column data and "Cassandra"-workloads.
    • "Gremlin API": For graph-based data and traversals.
    • "Table API": For key-value data, compatible with "Azure Table storage" SDKs.
  • "Low latency": Guarantees single-digit millisecond reads and writes at the 99th percentile, regardless of scale, for rapid application responsiveness.
  • "Automatic scaling": Independently scale throughput ("RU/s - Request Units per second") and storage to match workload demands, eliminating manual capacity management.
  • "High availability": 99.999% "SLA" for "multi-region accounts", with automatic failover and multi-master replication.
Common use cases:
  • IoT solutions: Ingest and process massive streams of device data globally.
  • Gaming: Real-time leaderboards and player state management with low latency.
  • Retail and e-commerce: Personalization, inventory, and order management at global scale.
  • Web and mobile apps: Applications needing seamless global user experiences and always-on data.

Scenario: You are developing a new mobile application that needs to store user profiles and real-time activity feeds. The application is expected to have millions of users worldwide and requires extremely low-latency data access with high availability. The data schema for user profiles is flexible and evolves frequently.

Reflection Question: How does "Azure Cosmos DB’s global distribution", "multi-model APIs" (e.g., Core (SQL) API for flexible JSON documents), and automatic scaling fundamentally enable developers to deliver seamless user experiences worldwide, with low-latency access and high availability at global scale?