AZ-204 — APIs, events, and messages
Route position
This path follows runtime, data, and security. It teaches how a workload crosses service boundaries and how to choose notification, streaming, or durable work-delivery semantics.
Ordered modules
- API Management, Event Grid, Event Hubs, Service Bus, and Queue Storage
- Application Insights and alerting are shared with the observability route.
Core mental model
An API exposes a contract and request/response boundary. An event announces that something happened. A stream carries ordered telemetry or events for consumers. A message represents work that a consumer must process and acknowledge. The sender’s delivery guarantee and the consumer’s retry/idempotency design determine the application behavior.
Checkpoint
Given a webhook notification, clickstream, order command, and simple background job, choose Event Grid, Event Hubs, Service Bus, or Queue Storage; explain the producer/consumer boundary, retry or checkpoint behavior, and what happens when a consumer is unavailable.
Sources and re-audit
- AZ-204 integration objectives, skills measured 2026-01-14; checked 2026-08-31.
- Choose an Azure messaging service, checked 2026-08-31.
Re-audit when delivery, ordering, retry, access, or service capability changes.