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The Azure IoT Operations SDKs are a suite of tools and libraries across multiple languages designed to aid the development of edge applications for Azure IoT Operations. The focus of the SDKs is to assist customers in developing edge applications by providing the following features:
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Highly available | Provides infrastructure and guidance to build high availability into your applications. |
| Choice of language | The SDKs target multiple languages to support any development environment. The languages supported today are C#, Go and Rust. |
| Secure | Uses the latest crypto libraries and protocols. |
| Zero data loss | Builds on MQTT broker to remove data loss due to application failure. |
| Low latency | Optimized layering and tight MQTT client coupling minimized overheads. |
| Integration with Azure IoT Operations services | Libraries provide access to services such as state store. |
| Simplify complex messaging | Provide support for communication between applications via MQTT v5 using a remote procedure call (RPC) implementation. |
| Support | A dedicated team at Microsoft maintains and supports the SDKs. |
The SDKs are open source and available on GitHub:
Important
Azure IoT Operations SDKs is currently in PREVIEW. The assets in the Azure IoT Operations SDKs GitHub repository are available for early access and feedback purposes.
Benefits of the SDKs
Compared to using an MQTT client directly, the SDKs provide an application framework that abstracts MQTT concepts, exposes a clean API surface, and supports the Protocol Compiler (codegen) to generate client and server code from Digital Twins Definition Language (DTDL) models. The SDKs can be used to build highly available applications at the edge, that interact with Azure IoT Operations to perform operations such as asset discovery, protocol translation and data transformation.
The key benefits of using the SDKs include:
- Connectivity: Maintain a secure connection to the MQTT Broker, including rotating server certificates and authentication keys.
- Security: Support SAT or X.509 certificate authentication with credential rotation.
- Configuration: Configure the MQTT Broker connection through the file system, environment, or connection string.
- Services: Provides client libraries to Azure IoT Operations services for simplified development.
- Protocol Compiler (codegen): Provides contract guarantees between client and servers via RPC and Telemetry.
- High availability: Building blocks for building highly available apps via state store and lease lock.
- Payload formats: Supports multiple serialization formats, built in when using codegen.
Components of the SDKs
The SDKs provide many components available for simplicity and ease of use:
A session client that augments the MQTT client adding reconnection and authentication to provide a seamless connectivity experience.
A set of protocol primitives, designed to help creating applications, built on the fundamental protocol implementations: Commands and Telemetry.
A set of clients providing integration with Azure IoT Operations services such as state store, lease lock, Azure Device Registry, and schema registry.
A Protocol Compiler (codegen), that allows clients and servers to communicate via a schema contract. First describe the communication (using Telemetry and Commands) with DTDL, then generate a set of client libraries and server library stubs across the supported programming languages.
Read further about the underlying terminology and different components of the SDKs:
- Components - An outline of each component and their function.
Applications types
The SDKs supports the following application types:
| Application type | Description |
|---|---|
| Edge application | Generic edge applications that need to interface with various Azure IoT Operations services such as the MQTT broker and state store. The SDKs provide convenient clients to simplify the development experience. An Edge application is a customer managed artifact, including deployment to the cluster and monitoring execution. |
| Akri connector | Specialized edge applications deployed by the Akri operator service and designed to interface with on-premises devices. An Akri connector is responsible for securing connections to southbound devices and assets using their native protocols, sending telemetry and data to upstream Azure IoT Operations components, and optionally detecting assets for onboarding into Azure Device Registry. An Akri connector's deployment is managed automatically by the Akri operator service. |
Samples and tutorials
Review the samples directory for samples about creating applications for Azure IoT Operation on the supported languages.
To deploy a fully functional application to a cluster and see the SDKs in action, follow the Tutorial: Build an event-driven app.
SDKs reference documentation
For documentation related to the implementation of the SDKs, it's fundamentals primitives and protocols as well as the underlying topic and payload structure used for communication over MQTT, see Azure IoT Operations SDKs GitHub documentation.
Next step
Try the Quickstart: Start developing with the Azure IoT Operations SDKs (preview)