Architecture

Is “Serverless” architecture just a finely-grained rebranding of PaaS?

2 June 2016

Serverless computing makes bold promises of development without having to worry about environments, scaling or deployment. Haven’t we been here before?

What do we actually mean when we say business logic?

14 April 2016

In most cases “business logic” just refers to the poorly-defined “gloop” that sits between user interfaces and databases in layered architectures.

API gateways and the dangers of creeping middleware scope

23 March 2016

An API gateway can solve many generic problems in an API infrastructure, but you do need to define a clear remit and protect against creeping scope.

Data design for event-driven architecture: autonomy, encapsulation and ordering

1 February 2016

When you’re implementing an event-driven architecture, the design of your events is absolutely critical to realize the benefits of loose coupling.

Comparing nServiceBus and MassTransit: Do we still need .Net integration frameworks?

26 November 2015

Both nServiceBus and Mass Transit plugged an important gap in Microsoft’s integration landscape, but do they have a role in a future that is likely to be dominated by diverse technologies and autonomous agile teams?

Most software architecture diagrams are useless

11 August 2015

The best architecture diagrams act as a map - if an architect can’t express a system clearly and concisely then they probably don’t understand it properly.

Can cross-cutting concerns really exist between services?

25 July 2015

You might be able to identify cross-cutting concerns in a monolith, but in a service-orientated world they should melt away into specific implementations.

Comparing Gartner’s cloud integration leaders: Informatica, Dell Boomi and Mulesoft

2 July 2015

Gartner’s definition of enterprise integration as a service is so wide that it can be difficult to draw any meaningful comparisons between the platforms in the “leaders” space.

Refactoring monoliths to microservices: the pragmatic reality

5 May 2015

Large scale rewrites of systems are loaded with risk. You can address this by preparing the ground in advance and adopting an incremental approach, but a willingness to be pragmatic is essential.

How big is a microservice?

9 March 2015

We know that micro services are small and focused by design – just how small is this in practice?

Why REST is not a silver bullet for service integration

4 January 2015

REST is sometimes described as the next evolutionary step in service integration. The problem is that REST provides too much of a dumb pipe to support genuinely decoupled, fault-tolerant service integration.

Don’t assume message ordering in Azure Service Bus

16 December 2014

Azure Service Bus can provide first-in-first-out messaging in theory, but this is not the same as guaranteeing the order in which your messages are processed.

The problem with tiered or layered architecture

9 July 2014

An architecture based on tiers or layers is too inflexible to deal with the more flexible demands of modern systems, particularly when you working with high-volume systems that require distributed processing.

Are microservices just “SOA done properly”?

12 June 2014

There’s nothing really new about many of the ideas that underpin microservices. Are they just an agile re-branding of SOA?

Eventual consistency and the trade-offs required by distributed development

4 May 2014

Developers who have been brought up on the certainties of ACID transactions often have a problem trusting eventual consistency. Once you start exploring the requirements in more depth this really so much of a handicap.