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Zero-Knowledge Proofs for the Layman

This article will introduce you to zero-knowledge proofs, a kind of cryptography you can use to provide the proof you know a secret, such as a private key or the solution to a problem, without ever sharing it to an interested party. While many articles exist on the topic, this will not require any high math knowledge.

Debasish Ray Chawdhuri
on Mar 18, 2024
Architecture & Design

The False Dichotomy of Monolith vs. Microservices

Taking sides in the debate of microservices v. monolith gets in the way of doing the right thing for our customers. Sometimes, we need microservices. Sometimes, we need a monolith. Most of the time we are better off somewhere between these extremes.

Ashley Davis
on Nov 02, 2023
Java

Migrate a RMI-Based Legacy Application to WebSocket

Technical debt, especially in enterprise software, is a relevant problem that developers recurrently have to face. This article provides a use case related to removing technical debt in a large enterprise application based on an old fashioned Remote Method Invocation (RMI) protocol, and migrating it toward modern cloud-aware communication technologies.

Bartolomeo Sorrentino
on Apr 05, 2023
Architecture & Design

Location, Location, Location: MVA Considerations for Distributed Processing and Data

Even when designing a Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA), developers must consider resource location, especially when mobile apps are part of a distributed system. Distributing the data and processing can introduce new challenges if location is not part of the decision-making criteria.

Kurt Bittner Pierre Pureur
on Sep 19, 2022
Architecture & Design

Seven Ways to Fail at Microservices

At QCon Plus last November, I presented some of the ways microservices can go wrong. I’m a consultant for IBM, and part of my job is helping businesses get cloud-native. These problems are based on my experience – which, unfortunately, I see repeatedly in the field.

Holly Cummins
on Feb 14, 2022
Emerging Technologies

Forensic Monitoring of Blockchains is Key for Broader Industry Adoption

This article presents a new blockchain consensus mechanism, XinFin Delegated Proof-of-Stake Consensus Protocol 2.0, that provides a higher level of trust by creating an efficient judiciary system. It has been designed to keep all verifying nodes accountable and allow for bad actors to be identified and effectively neutralized.

Fisher Yu
on Oct 29, 2021
Culture & Methods

Building Reliable Software Systems with Chaos Engineering

Advances in large-scale, distributed software systems are changing the game for software engineering. As an industry, we are quick to adopt practices that improve flexibility and improve feature velocity. If we can move quickly, can we do so without breaking things? Chaos Engineering practices can be used to navigate complexity and build more reliable systems.

Ben Linders Casey Rosenthal
on Jun 08, 2021
Cloud

Can We Trust the Cloud Not to Fail?

I will start with the theory behind failure detection, and then review a couple of real-world examples of how the mechanism works in a real cloud - on Azure. Even though this article includes real-world applications of failure detection within Azure, the same notions could also apply to GCP, AWS, or any other distributed system.

Lena Hall
on May 11, 2021
Cloud

The Evolution of Distributed Systems on Kubernetes

At QCon in March, Bilgin Ibryam, product manager at Red Hat, gave a talk on the evolution of distributed systems with Kubernetes. You might have an answer to that, and Ibryam has one too. At the end of the article, you will find out what he thinks the answer will be.

Bilgin Ibryam
on Mar 24, 2021
Architecture & Design

Microservices from the Trenches: Lessons, Benefits, Challenges, and Mistakes

Nicky Wrightson, from Skyscanner, hosted a panel at QCon London with participants who have moved from the monolith to microservices and in some cases back again. They share their experience with microservices on production, and also strong opinions on monorepos, on operating distributed systems, and on the best way to structure an organization to make a success of this architecture.

Luke Blaney Matt Heath Manuel Pais Alexandra Noonan Nicky Wrightson
on Feb 15, 2021
Architecture & Design

Migrating Monoliths to Microservices with Decomposition and Incremental Changes

Microservices migrations are not a trivial change. You have to think carefully about whether or they're right for you. Maybe a monolith would be enough for your context and business needs. In this article, Sam Newman shares some decomposition and incremental changes patterns that can help you to evaluate and migrate to a microservices architecture.

Sam Newman Leandro Guimarães
on Feb 09, 2021
AI, ML & Data Engineering

Performance Tuning Techniques of Hive Big Data Table

In this article, author Sudhish Koloth discusses how to tackle performance problems when using Hive Big Data tables.

Sudhish Koloth
on Feb 05, 2021