# Design the application architecture
*This portion takes up 15-20% of the exam*

### Plan the application layers
Plan data access; plan for separation of concerns, appropriate use of models, views, controllers, components, and service dependency injection; choose between client-side and server-side processing; design for scalability; choose between ASP.NET Core and ASP.NET; choose when to use .NET standard libraries

### Design a distributed application
Design a hybrid application; plan for session management in a distributed environment; plan web farms; run Microsoft Azure services on-premises with Azure Pack; enable deferred processing through Azure features including queues, scheduled and on-demand jobs, Azure Functions, and Azure Web Jobs

### Design and implement the Azure Web Apps life cycle
Identify and implement Start, Run, and Stop events; code against application events in applications; configure startup tasks, including IIS, app pool configuration, and third-party tools

### Configure state management
Choose a state management mechanism including in-process, out of process, and Redis-based state management; plan for scalability; use cookies or local storage to maintain state; apply configuration settings in web.config files; implement sessionless state including query strings; configure middleware to enable session and application state in ASP.NET Core

### Design a caching strategy
Implement page output caching and data caching; create cache profiles; implement HTTP caching; implement Azure Redis caching; plan a content delivery network (CDN) strategy, for example, Azure CDN

### Design and implement a Web Socket strategy
Read and write string and binary data asynchronously; choose a connection loss strategy; decide when to use Web Sockets; implement SignalR; enable web socket features in an Azure Web App instance

#### Design a configuration management solution
Manage configuration sources, including XML, JSON, and INI files; manage environment variables; implement Option objects; implement multiple environments using files and hierarchical structure; manage sensitive configuration; react to runtime configuration changes; implement a custom configuration source; secure configuration by using Azure Key Vault; use the Secret Manager tool in development to keep secrets out of your code for configuration values

### Interact with the host environment
Work with file system using file providers; work with environment variables; determine hosting environment capabilities; implement native components, including PInvoke and native dependencies for hosts including Linux and Windows; use ASP.NET hosting on an Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN)-based server

#### Compose an application by using the framework pipeline
Add custom request processing modules to the pipeline; add, remove, and configure services used in the application; design and implement middleware; design for kestrel, Http.sys web server and IIS; design and implement startup filters

### Preparation resources
* [Entity Framework Development workflows](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/data/jj590134)
* [DataAdapters and DataReaders](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms254931(v=vs.110).aspx)
* [ASP.NET State Management overview](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/75x4ha6s(v=vs.100).aspx)

###### tags: `Microsoft` `Certification`