Durable Entities provide a way to manage small pieces of state with well-defined operations. Entities are addressable by a unique identifier and can be called from orchestrations or signaled from anywhere.
Important
Durable Entities are not directly supported for end-user development in the Durable Task Framework. The entity-related APIs that exist in this library (such as TaskEntity, EntityId, OrchestrationEntityContext, etc.) are low-level infrastructure components intended to support Azure Durable Functions scenarios.
If you want to build applications that leverage the capabilities of Durable Entities, consider one of the following options:
Azure Durable Functions provides a complete, high-level programming model for Durable Entities with full support for:
- Entity classes and function-based entities
- Calling and signaling entities from orchestrations
- Entity state persistence and management
- Distributed locking and critical sections
The Durable Task SDK used together with the Durable Task Scheduler provides a modern programming model with entity support. This is the recommended approach for new .NET applications that need durable entity capabilities outside of Azure Functions.
- Durable Task Scheduler — Learn about the Durable Task Scheduler backend
- Choosing a Backend — Compare available backend providers