Service Bus architecture for ASP.NET Web API

Question

I am developing a mobile application using Telerik Platform. The services consumed by the app are ASP.NET Web API RESTful services which are hosted on Azure. I'd like to build some resilience into the app by adding a service bus and have been looking at Azure Service Bus which seems to be what I'm looking for.

It's fairly new to me and I have a few questions.

• Can Azure Service Bus be used for RESTful services that return data or are they fire-and-forget only?
• For simple RESTful services is Azure Service Bus the way to go or Azure Storage Queue? When would you use one vs the other?
• When would I use a Queue vs Topic / Subscription?

Answer 1

ASB is about messaging. You use messaging for communication between parts of your system/services. RESTful services can leverage ASB by translating a request into a message to perform some work. Emphasis on converting the intent into a message, to instruct about work that needs to take place, not execute the work itself.

ASB or ASQ is your choice. This is where you need to choose between the features and capabilities each provides. There's a good MSFT comparison documentation on it.

Queues vs Topics/Subscriptions - if you need to send a message to a single destination (a command) then queue is simpler. In case a message needs to be broadcasted to multiple receivers (events), topics/subscriptions are your friends.