Standards body and specifications for container images and artefacts. Beyond images, Azure Container Registry can hold Helm charts, SBOMs and signatures in this format.
Also called Open Container Initiative.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains OCI in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Container
Something that groups data. Blob Storage containers sit inside a storage account and hold blobs much as folders hold files; Cosmos DB containers hold items and set the scope for partitioning and throughput.
- Azure Container Registry
Private Azure registry for container images. Images can be geo-replicated, cleaned up by retention policies and built by ACR Tasks, while webhooks let a push kick off continuous deployment.
- FORMAT
A DAX function that turns a value into text according to a format string, for instance "MMMM" to show a month's name. Since the output is text, numeric operations can't use it, and dynamic format strings were introduced to get around that.
Related terms
- GitHub Container registry
Hosts Docker and OCI images within GitHub Packages, with fine-grained package permissions. On Azure, Azure Container Registry does this job, since Azure Artifacts lacks a container feed.
- Image import
Copying container images or OCI artefacts into Azure Container Registry entirely on the server side, with no Docker installation locally; sources include Docker Hub, MCR and other registries inside or outside Azure.
- Notary Project
Set of cross-industry specifications and tools for signing OCI artifacts and verifying signatures. Azure Container Registry uses it in place of Docker Content Trust.
- ORAS
Command-line tool that treats any file as an OCI artefact, pushing, pulling and attaching items such as SBOMs and signatures to an image in a registry.