The file extension typically used to define shared Razor directives that can be utilized across multiple views is .razorimports. This file allows you to specify common directives or 'using' statements that should apply to multiple Razor views, streamlining your code and maintaining consistency.

A primary feature of ASP.NET Core Identity is user registration and management. It allows you to create, update, and manage user accounts, including features like user registration, login, password reset, and role-based access control (RBAC).

The UseExceptionHandler middleware is used to display custom error pages to users when an unhandled exception occurs. UseDeveloperExceptionPage, on the other hand, shows detailed exception information during development, but it's not suitable for production as it can leak sensitive information.

Middleware in ASP.NET Core plays a critical role in processing web requests. It sits between the web server and your application, allowing you to handle HTTP requests and responses. Each middleware component can perform tasks like routing, authentication, logging, and more.

To ensure that only the blog author can edit or delete a post, you would apply the [Authorize] attribute to the Edit and Delete actions in the controller. This allows you to specify authorization at the action level, and you can further customize it to check if the user making the request is the author of the post being edited or deleted. Applying [Authorize] to the entire controller would restrict access to all actions within it, which is not the desired behavior in this case. [Authorize(Roles = "Admin")] is role-based authorization and doesn't address this scenario, and [AllowAnonymous] would allow everyone, which is the opposite of the desired behavior.

After code is committed to a version control system (e.g., Git), the next typical step in a CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipeline is the build process. During the build, the code is compiled, tested, and packaged, preparing it for deployment to different environments.

Optimistic Concurrency is a technique used in Entity Framework Core to handle concurrent updates. When enabled, it checks if a record has been modified by another user since it was loaded, and if so, it prevents the update, ensuring data integrity and preventing data loss due to overwrites.

ASP.NET Core allows you to deploy your applications in a self-contained manner, ensuring they are platform-independent. This means that all the necessary runtime components are included with the application, eliminating the need for specific dependencies on the host system and providing portability.

In the URL /Books/Details/3, the "3" is a route parameter. Route parameters allow you to pass data from the URL to your controller actions, making it dynamic and allowing you to retrieve information specific to the value "3."

In EF Core, the class used to represent the database's context is typically named DbContext. This class acts as the entry point for interacting with the database, containing DbSet properties that represent tables and allowing you to define database operations. DbSet represents individual tables, while EntityContext and DataContext are not standard EF Core classes.