Microsoft Graph: 

This is a continuation of a series of articles on operational engineering aspects of Azure public cloud computing that included the most recent discussion on cloud protection. This article describes Microsoft Graph.

 

Microsoft Graph provides a unified programmability model and similar in its utility as a Kusto cluster and database. The Microsoft Graph model allows Microsoft Graph Connectors to access data from different data sources and provides a common way to query the data. It is the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. It can also act as a source for downstream Azure data stores that require data to be delivered. The Microsoft Graph Data Connect provides a set of tools to streamline secure and scalable delivery of Microsoft Graph Data.

 

The emphasis is on heterogeneity of data in the form of files, messages, meetings, user, people, devices, groups, calendar, coworkers, insights, chats, teams, and tasks. The unified programming access it provides can access data in and across Microsoft services including the Cloud, the hybrid cloud and the third-party cloud. A thin aggregation layer is used to route incoming requests to their corresponding destination services. This pattern of data virtualization is not uncommon, but the collection of data and the unified model provides an incredible opportunity for developers.

There are three challenges that Microsoft Graph aims to solve. These are:

1.       The inability to write an application agnostic of any given environment – previous endpoints were defined per user/per-tenant and resulted in applications that had to be rebuilt for each customer.

2.       The absence of a unified authentication/authorization model for all Office users requiring developers to build applications to serve different populations.

3.       The inconsistency in the format of the data returned that causes difficulty in correlating data across the workloads.

 

When the programmability model is unified, the cycle of api development involving the steps to think about the scenarios in which the API will be consumed, design the API to meet those scenarios, design and implement authentication and authorization, publish the API in beta form, publish the API documentation, publish SDKs and support the community, become faster. The developers find that they can allow the users of their applications to use a single token to access data across all workloads, use an end-to-end environment with resources such as sample queries, sample data and tools such as Graph Explorer, and explore REST APIs or SDKs to access the platform endpoints to build the applications on Graph.