I am developng an app with xamarin and azure serverless functions as backend for the app.
I will be syncing map coordinates from the users in real time with a database on the cloud. i.e : taking coordinates from all users and then pushing the updated coordinates to all users at the same time, continuously so that all users can see live location of each other.
So I have to call an azure function in continous loop in order to sync database with cloud. so it can check db after every, 4-5 secs. is it the best way to do this? or will this cause too much execution of azure function and might be costly? If there is a better way to sync the db please suggest. Thankyou.
You have a mobile app that is making http calls to azure functions. Functions is elastic and scale will likely be fine. As I understand, you're not asking how to implement the server side of this; rather the real question here is pricing, right?
Azure Functions can run in two ways:
- "serverless", aka "Consumption plan". In this case, Azure Functions is managing the underlying server (and scale out) and you pay only for active usage (per GB*Sec). This is what you get by default when you visit http://functions.Azure.com. See pricing details here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/functions/
- "AppService" - In this case, you've bought a VM upfront and you decided how much to scale. You pay a fixed monthly cost. See pricing details here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/app-service/
You can switch between them. I'd recommend starting with the first approach. It will certainly be cheaper in the beginning when you have low traffic. Monitor cost, run your scenarios through the pricing sheets, and consider switching to the 2nd if it ends up being cheaper.
