WAF Ambassador Pattern
May 7, 2025•237 words•2 min read•
azure
design patterns
reliability
security
Category | Description | WAF Description |
---|---|---|
What | A design pattern where an ambassador service acts as an intermediary between a client and backend services. | Helper services that send network requests on behalf of a consumer service or application. An out-of-process proxy that is co-located with the client. |
Used with | Microservices architectures, sidecar proxies, and services that require abstraction of cross-cutting concerns. | Legacy applications or hard to change. |
When | When you want to offload responsibilities like logging, routing, retry policies, or monitoring from the main application. | Build shared client connectivity features. Offload connectivity concerns to specialists. Support legacy app cloud connectivity. |
Not Suitable For | Simple applications where direct communication with services is sufficient and no abstraction layer is needed. | Latency critical; proxy adds overhead. Single language; prefer client library. Features need deep client integration. |
Related To | Sidecar pattern, Proxy pattern, API Gateway pattern, Service Mesh. | Sidecar pattern |
A basic implementation of the Ambassador pattern can be found here.
The full WAF description of the pattern can be found here.