What was going on in February 2023 around Python in the Azure ecosystem?

Here are some of the things that I came across in February regarding Python in the Azure ecosystem:

1. In a blogpost about the State of the Azure SDK 2023 [24], the Azure SDK team has announced the launch of a monthly Azure SDK Community Standup.

   [The SDK Team's] goal is to create a space where developers can come together, share their experiences and knowledge, and discuss the latest developments in the Azure SDK ecosystem. [...] Join us every second Tuesday of the month from 11:00 AM to noon Pacific Time (UTC-8) to learn, collaborate, and grow with the community. Check out the recording of our premiere standup!

   • The first recording is here. [25]

2. New Python versions have been released.

   • Python 3.10.10 [22] and Python 3.11.2 [23]

3. Azure Functions support for Python 3.10 is GA. [21]

   You can now develop functions using Python 3.10 locally and deploy them to all Azure Functions plans.

4. Azure SDK for Python - February 2023 Releases [20]

5. Developing Azure Functions using the v2 programming model for Python | Azure Friday [19]

   Gavin Aguiar and Shreya Batra join Scott Hanselman to discuss the v2 programming model for Azure Functions using Python.

   • Comprehensive overview over the simplified v2 programming model and how quick deployments can be done through Visual Studio Code.

6. Announcements of the latest beta release of the Azure Text Analytics client libraries for Python [18]. The blog post highlights Python samples for these features:

   • Abstractive summarization
   • Named entity recognition (NER) resolutions
   • Dynamic classification
   • Healthcare FHIR bundles with document type
   • Automatic language and script detection

   Note

   If you follow the example along:

   • you may need to create the cognitive services account in the right region, otherwise you might be seein errors like this when attempting to run the code: {'code': 'InvalidRequest', 'message': "Job task: 'AbstractiveSummarization-0' failed with validation error: Document abstractive summarization is not supported in the region {Your-Region}. The supported regions are North Europe, East US, UK South."}
   • you may need to request access at https://aka.ms/applyforgatedsummarizationfeatures if the service is part of a gated public preview feature.

7. Azure Developer CLI (azd) includes new templates for Python [14].

   • Deploy a Python (Flask) web app with PostgreSQL in Azure [15]
   • Deploy a Python (Django) web app with PostgreSQL in Azure [16]
   • HTTP API powered by FastAPI with Azure Functions and APIM [17]

8. Not really a February update but a reminder:

   On 31 March 2023, [Microsoft] will be retiring support for Azure SDK libraries which do not conform to [their] current Azure SDK guidelines.
   
   — Azure Updates[12]

   • Here is the list of deprecated Python libraries [13]

9. February 2023 release of the Python and Jupyter extensions for Visual Studio Code are now available [11].

References