Published in CodeX·Dec 7, 2022Member-onlyDistributed Computing ConceptsA Brief Introduction — Preface It would be rather nice if computers never failed, networks were reliable and all operations were always cleanly and gracefully executed, never leaving the system in a state of ambiguity. Unfortunately, this cannot be; we have to contend with the bleak harshness of reality, which is particularly exacerbated when dealing…Distributed Systems14 min readDistributed Systems14 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Aug 11, 2021Member-onlyRedis: Unsafe At Any SpeedPerformance that Comes at a Price — The proliferation of NoSQL/NewSQL products has gifted the software engineering community a wealth of viable alternatives for storing and retrieving data, of various shapes and sizes — with different performance, scalability, consistency and availability characteristics. The highly rigid and somewhat ageing relational data model is no longer indiscriminately imposed. As…Redis28 min readRedis28 min read
Apr 15, 2021You Really Can Replace Kafka with a Database1218Todd HubersThank you for a quality rebuttal, and for taking the time to read and analyse my original post.Thank you for a quality rebuttal, and for taking the time to read and analyse my original post. I'm not going to comment on the individual points, as I agree with most of them — taken in isolation. I particularly appreciate the point on securing database views; I may incorporate…2 min read2 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Apr 14, 2021Member-onlyYou Can Replace Kafka with a DatabaseBut for goodness’ sake, don’t — Engineers are constantly on the lookout for ways of doing more with less. This post a gentle reminder that less, contrary to the cliché, is not always more. I am cheerfully reminded of an old Top Gear episode, in which the protagonists get £10,000 each to buy a used, mid-engined…Apache Kafka12 min readApache Kafka12 min read
Published in The Startup·Mar 4, 2021Member-onlyContrasting Kafka with AkkaOn the similarities and differences between two industry heavyweights — My software architecture consulting gigs take me places ranging from startups to more established organisations, having one thing in common: they are looking to solve a problem using a distributed systems approach. Organisations are quick to embrace the benefits of microservices and event-driven architecture—scalability, supporting business change, polyglot culture, deployment…Apache Kafka5 min readApache Kafka5 min read
Published in Towards Data Science·Feb 26, 2021Member-onlyThe Design of an Event StoreThe road beyond event sourcing — The topics “event-driven architecture” “event stream processing” and “event sourcing” have enjoyed quite a buzz as of late. While the concepts are not new, it would seem that only now the software engineering community is beginning to appreciate the power and flexibility of building autonomous, loosely coupled systems that intelligently…Event Streaming20 min readEvent Streaming20 min read
Published in codeburst·Jan 25, 2021Member-onlyCombining strict order with massive parallelism using KafkaGetting the best of both worlds — Having been involved in several large-scale Kafka projects for different clients across a broad range of industries, I have heard my fair share of questions on Apache Kafka — ranging from the fundamental to the esoteric. One question that never seems to go out of fashion is: How can you…Apache Kafka7 min readApache Kafka7 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Sep 2, 2020Member-onlyContrasting NATS with Apache KafkaTL;DR Kafka is an Event Streaming Platform, while NATS is a closer to a conventional Message Queue. Kafka is optimised around the unique needs of emerging Event-Driven Architectures, which enrich the traditional pub-sub model with strong ordering and persistence semantics. Conversely, NATS is highly optimised around pub-sub topologies, and is…Kafka6 min readKafka6 min read
Published in The Startup·Apr 24, 2020Member-onlyApache Kafka in a NutshellArchitecture, Use Cases, and a Getting Started guide — rolled into one — So, you’ve heard of this Kafka thing that’s popping up all over the shop. From green-sprout startups to greedy multi-nationals, in all sorts of weird and wonderful contexts. It appears that someone has figured out a Swiss Army knife piece of über-tech that works for microservices, event-streaming, CQRS, and just…Kafka19 min readKafka19 min read
Published in codeburst·Apr 23, 2020Member-onlyReintroducing Kafdrop 3A journey of revival — TL;DR Kafdrop 3 is a reboot of the original Kafdrop that fills a gaping void in the observability tooling of the world’s most popular event streaming platform. It solves problems that the Kafka community has been crying out for, bringing Event Sourcing and Big Data into closer reach of many…Kafka12 min readKafka12 min read
