Beneath Abstraction

What if you could replace your Bash or PowerShell scripts with C#? With .NET 10’s File-Based Apps, you can run a .cs file directly—no project files, no build step. In this post, we’ll explore how to use C# scripts in Azure DevOps pipelines, using a real example: deploying an AI agent with a single .cs file. Why C# for Pipeline Scripts? Pipeline scripts are typically written in Bash or PowerShell. But what if you already know C#? With .NET 10’s file-based apps, you can now use C# as a scripting language—similar to how Node.js or Python work. ...

C# 14 Field-Backed Properties: A Cleaner Way One of the developer-friendly features in C# 14 (shipping with .NET 10) is field-backed properties. This feature eliminates a common pain point when working with properties that need custom logic while maintaining clean, readable code. The Problem in C# 13 and Earlier In previous versions of C#, you had two main options for properties: Option 1: Auto-Implemented Properties Simple and clean, but no room for custom logic: ...

Introduction The Model Context Protocol (MCP) has changed the way how AI applications interact with external data sources and services, and the need to securely expose REST APIs as MCP servers has become more critical. Azure API Management provides an enterprise-grade solution that facilitates this transformation and along with its robust security, monitoring, and governance capabilities. In this post, I explore two approaches to expose REST APIs as MCP servers using Azure API Management: ...

Introduction In this blog post, we’ll dive into how to expose Azure AI Foundry endpoints through API Management, protect the APIs from overuse with token-based rate limiting, and monitor token usage per API subscriber. These features in API Management are known as GenAI gateway capabilities. Azure AI Foundry is a powerful platform for deploying and managing large language models (LLMs) for all sorts of AI-driven applications. These AI capabilities are available via API endpoints. Azure API Management is a platform designed to streamline and enhance the management of APIs, which offers a range of capabilities such as enhanced security, rate limiting, and monitoring etc. ...

Running Sidecar Containers in Azure App Service: An experiment with Dapr Today I decided to try Azure App Service’s new ability to run sidecar containers. My goal, To create a simple .NET API, run it in Azure App Service, and pair it with Dapr as a sidecar container and use it for state management. Locally, Dapr would connect to a local Redis docker container, and once deployed to Azure, it would seamlessly switch to Azure Cache for Redis. ...

Introduction In this blog post we look into a scalable and flexible platform to run microservices on Azure without the complexity of managing infrastructure. Azure Container Apps allows you to run containerized microservices and integrating Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime) can simplify the communication between services, manage state, and handle pub/sub messaging. This blog also shows how to set up Azure Container Apps, and how to deploy Dapr-enabled microservices that communicate with each other. ...

Understanding and Mitigating Prompt Injection Attacks with Prompt Shield in Azure AI Studio Introduction In the fast-changing landscape of Generative AI and its applications, keeping AI models secure and reliable is very important. Prompt injection is one of the prominent attack identified against AI Implementations. Azure AI Studio offers a solutions to tackle these threats and is called Prompt Shield. This blog will explain what prompt injection attacks are, their possible effects, and how Azure AI Studio’s Prompt Shield can protect against them. ...