Prior to this course, we recommend you have at least a basic understanding of application development.

This essentials course and its companion implementation course are designed with web applications in mind. However, these identity concepts also apply to other types of applications including mobile applications and desktop applications.

You will need to understand how to read JSON and XML, as those formats are seen throughout the course.

You will also want to understand basic security concepts such as encryption and hashing, as these are referenced in the course.

Finally, you need at least a high level understanding of storing data. Data can be stored in a variety of data stores and on-premises or in the cloud. While we are not getting into the implementation in this course, it would be beneficial to understand that there isn't magic behind identity and that data is stored somewhere.