Microservices
What are microservices anyway? IMHO if the phrase means anything at all, it’s a decentralised, agile and automated take on building distributed services, which is got to be a good thing, right?
April 22nd, 2020
Do you really need Kubernetes?
If you are working with a lot of “twelve-factor” services then probably, yes. That said, you may get a creeping feeling that Kubernetes was designed to solve problems at a scale that most people never reach…?
February 8th, 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.
January 26th, 2020
Running “serverless” containers in AWS Fargate, Google Cloud Run and Azure
“Serverless” containers could help you to avoid the complexity of Kubernetes, but you may struggle to leverage them for anything beyond small, predictable workloads or batch jobs.
December 14th, 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?
October 6th, 2019
Splitting up shared databases
The problem of shared databases is not confined to monolithic systems. A big store of shared state is the guilty secret lurking in many a microservice architecture.
April 14th, 2019
Why is loose coupling between services so important?
You can’t eliminate coupling between collaborating services, but you can ensure that it doesn’t prevent you from enjoying the benefits of service-based development.
March 8th, 2019
Sharing microservices across large organisations
Sharing microservices across organisational boundaries is much harder than it looks. There are technical, operational, organisational and financial issues that need to be considered if you want to be successful.
February 9th, 2019
Now that Kubernetes is on Azure, what is Service Fabric for?
There does seem to be growing confusion over what Service Fabric is really for. Is it an orchestrator for microservices? A means of lifting and shifting legacy applications into the cloud? An application development framework?
January 6th, 2019
Finding service boundaries: more than just the bounded context
When you are identifying service boundaries, it’s not enough to consider the domain model alone. There are other, more pragmatic concerns to bear in mind.
October 12th, 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…
September 21st, 2018
Implementing a Docker HEALTHCHECK using ASP.Net Core 2.2
Starting with version 2.2, ASP.Net Core will make it easier to implement monitoring endpoints that can be used by a Docker HEALTHCHECK command.
September 12th, 2018
Hosting .Net Core containers in Service Fabric
Service Fabric does support container-based applications, but it still feels more like an application server than a container orchestrator.
August 12th, 2018
Building Twelve Factor Apps with .Net Core
Twelve factor apps provide a methodology for building apps that are optimised for modern cloud environments. It’s only been achievable in the Microsoft world since the advent of .Net Core.
June 3rd, 2018
Layers, onions, hexagons and the folly of application-wide abstractions
Not only are layered applications difficult to maintain, but the common abstractions they are built on tend to give rise to inflexible implementations that have serious scalability challenges.
May 8th, 2018
How to decompose that monolith into microservices. Gently does it…
You’re rarely given the opportunity to focus on transitioning an architecture to the exclusion of everything else. You may have to get used to the idea that decomposing a monolith is a direction of travel rather than a clear destination.
March 20th, 2018
GraphQL will not solve your API design problems
If you find REST APIs difficult to design, develop and scale, then your experience with GraphQL is not going to be any easier.
March 9th, 2018
Microservice preconditions: what needs to be in place before you decompose that monolith…
One of the main benefits of microservices is that they reduce the cost of change. The problem is that you need to make a significant up-front investment to realise this saving. Your first few microservices are more likely to be an expensive and potentially painful undertaking.
December 13th, 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.
December 3rd, 2017
Automating Docker image deployments using Azure Container Instances
Azure’s Container Instances provides an easy and quick way to run Docker images without having to learn the various complexities of orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes.
November 4th, 2017
Events, sagas and workflows: managing long-running processes between services
An event-driven architecture can give rise to complex chains of events that are difficult to manage. These problems can be mitigated through careful design rather than resorting to shared state databases or workflow engines.
October 3rd, 2017
Managing and throttling serverless scaling with Azure Functions
The serverless promise of unlimited scale-out can be a curse when your downstream processes and data stores have strict limits on throughput. With Azure Functions your options for mitigating this are limited, though the new durable functions may provide an answer…
August 14th, 2017
Swagger is not WSDL for REST. It’s much less useful than that…
Swagger enables the same kind of automated discovery and integration that WSDL was invented to support. In doing so it undermines the design of REST APIs and doesn’t even provide adequate documentation.
July 5th, 2017
Writing unit tests for Azure Functions using C#
You can now write compiled Azure functions in C# with full unit test coverage, though there are a few obstacles along the way.
June 4th, 2017
Can consumer-driven contracts manage breaking change in microservice integrations?
One of the more enduring problems with service integration is managing change in service interfaces. Consumer-driven contracts can help to detect breaking changes, but this visibility comes at a price.
May 26th, 2017
Comparing serverless C# and .Net development using Azure Functions and AWS Lambda
Recently released toolsets for AWS Lambda and Azure Functions are finally making serverless application development available to C# developers.
May 16th, 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?
April 12th, 2017
Using Docker to build and deploy .Net Core console applications
Using Docker with .Net Core is initially straightforward, but to get beyond basic image building you will need to handle more than the simple scenarios demonstrated in quick-start guides.
November 13th, 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.
October 3rd, 2016
What’s so bad about monoliths anyway…?!
Don’t get me wrong – I am an advocate of decomposing functionality into autonomous services. My reservation is that you need to have a lot of prerequisites in place before you can start leveraging microservices.
July 12th, 2016
Simplifying .Net REST API development: Nancy, self-hosting and ASP.Net Core
REST API development using ASP.Net WebAPI is so fussy compared to other ecosystems such as Node.js and Ruby. New frameworks are emerging that promise to simplify both development and hosting of APIs in the .Net world.
June 2nd, 2016
Is “Serverless” architecture just a finely-grained rebranding of PaaS?
Serverless computing makes bold promises of development without having to worry about environments, scaling or deployment. Haven’t we been here before?
May 5th, 2016
Managing services that don’t have clear code ownership
How do you organise code ownership for services that do not align conveniently with team or organisational boundaries?
July 25th, 2015
Can cross-cutting concerns really exist between services?
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.
May 5th, 2015
Refactoring large monoliths to microservices: strategies, risks and pragmatic reality
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.
April 20th, 2015
Microservices, REST and the distributed big ball of mud
The “big ball of mud” describes a system architecture that is sprawling, sloppy and haphazard. That’s precisely how you’d describe some emerging microservice architectures.
March 9th, 2015
How big is a microservice?
We know that micro services are small and focused by design – just how small is this in practice?
January 4th, 2015
Why REST is not a silver bullet for service integration
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.
June 12th, 2014
Are microservices just SOA “done properly”?
There’s nothing really new about many of the ideas that underpin microservices. Are they just an agile re-branding of SOA?