Integration
8 February 2020
When is an event not an event?
Message design in an event-driven architecture can be quite nuanced, especially if you want to achieve any of the benefits of loose coupling that they can be associated with.
14 December 2019
When should you write your own message endpoint library?
Enterprise messaging patterns are complex beasts that often warrant a common implementation across your endpoints. Should you ever be tempted to roll your own?
28 October 2019
Using Azure Data Factory with the Application Insights REST API
Persisting aggregates of AppInsights data in a warehouse can be a useful means of distributing summary information or retaining monitoring data over the long term. You can automate the harvesting of these aggregates using Azure Data Factory.
4 July 2019
Azure Data Factory and the myth of the code-free data warehouse
Azure Data Factory has been much improved with the addition of data flows, but it suffers from some familiar integration platform shortcomings. The claim of enabling a “code free” warehouse may be pushing things a bit.
12 October 2018
Messaging anti-patterns in event-driven architecture
Event-driven integration can improve the scalability, resilience and scalability of distributed applications… but this does depend on the design of your event messages…
13 December 2017
Entity services: when microservices are worse than monoliths
Finely-grained, entity-based services seem to be advocated by some pretty authoritative sources. This is unfortunate as they are something of an anti-pattern that can undermine many of the benefits of decomposing an monolith into micoservices.
16 May 2017
API management and the return of the enterprise service bus
No self-respecting integration platform is complete without an API management story these days. Is this just a RESTful return of the enterprise service bus?
13 November 2016
Handling Protocol Buffers backwards compatibility between versions 2 and 3 using C#
You will inevitably be pushed towards upgrading your protocol buffer messages to Proto3, particularly if you want a client that supports .Net Standard that .Net Core. This can be done, but there are a couple of speed bumps along the way.
13 August 2016
PolyBase import and export between Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Blob Storage
SQL Server Polybase makes it easy to load data into Azure SQL Data Warehouse by letting you define groups of files held in Azure blob storage as relational data tables.
23 March 2016
API gateways and the dangers of creeping middleware scope
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.
1 February 2016
Data design for event-driven architecture: autonomy, encapsulation and ordering
When you’re implementing an event-driven architecture, the design of your events is absolutely critical to realize the benefits of loose coupling.
18 January 2016
Informatica Cloud development best practices
Informatica Cloud is a powerful environment but a pretty unforgiving one. Here are some best practices that I have picked up from implementing the platform.
12 December 2015
Pragmatic REST: APIs without hypermedia and HATEOAS
If you’re not using HATEAOS then you’re not using REST. That’s true enough, but in many cases adopting HATEOAS doesn’t deliver much value beyond architectural purity.
26 November 2015
Comparing nServiceBus and MassTransit: Do we still need .Net integration frameworks?
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?
15 October 2015
Using the REST API connector as a data source in Informatica Cloud
It can be pretty straightforward to read REST API resources using Informatica Cloud - so long as you know which levers to pull and your data is in a sympathetic format.