WAF Ambassador Pattern

May 7, 2025237 words2 min read
azure
design patterns
reliability
security

WAF Ambassador Pattern

CategoryDescriptionWAF Description
WhatA 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 withMicroservices architectures, sidecar proxies, and services that require abstraction of cross-cutting concerns.Legacy applications or hard to change.
WhenWhen 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 ForSimple 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 ToSidecar pattern, Proxy pattern, API Gateway pattern, Service Mesh.Sidecar pattern

WAF Ambassador Pattern

A basic implementation of the Ambassador pattern can be found here.

The full WAF description of the pattern can be found here.

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