I was recently running some load tests against one of our services with JMeter. The results from JMeter and the results from our application monitoring tool were not adding up. So I wanted to add a kind of correlation parameter to the requests. This would allow me to make sure the results I was looking … Read more
Command Query Responsibility Segregation is an overloaded “term”. It is often confused or muddled with Event Sourcing. The two can go together nicely, but they do not have to. What Is It CQRS is really the principle and practice of separating data reads and data updates. This does not dictate at which layer that separation … Read more
Sometimes, technologies become such a hot buzzword that they are hard to really figure out what they are about. And where they are useful; what problems they are meant to solve. GraphQL is one of those technologies. Confusion I had originally thought that GraphQL had something to do with Graph databases. That seems to be … Read more
Recently we have been running into performance issues with load tests in one of our environments. When digging into the issue with Instana, we do not get much useful information. It just says that the time is spent in “Network”. Instana calculates this network time by seeing when the trace “leaves” one instrumented system, and … Read more
How much time and effort do you put into tuning the JVM for your application? Do you just accept the defaults and run with it? Do you set the max heap size, and that’s good enough? Or do you reach in and really adjust the settings to fit your app perfectly? Defaults It seems like … Read more
Docker is supposed to not only transform how you run your applications in production, but also improve your local development environment. Yet I have not seen much around actually using Docker for development. In Your IDE There are now some plugins for various IDEs coming out that make use of Docker for development. IntelliJ’s Python … Read more
Do you have a personal Kanban board? I highly recommend it; even though I honestly do not use one any more myself. Here’s why. Multitasking Humans are pretty darn bad at multitasking. We generally do not perform well when working on more than one thing at a time. Go look up some studies (I’m lazy … Read more
What generates conversation in your organization, or your team? User Stories I’ve heard that user stories are supposed to be “placeholders for conversations”. The workflow a user story goes through is the “flow” of communication. Communication between the customer and product. Then between product and development. Then between development and operations. Finally back to product … Read more
Is your application a good member of your team, or a horrible member? Does it let you know when it is feeling down, and can’t handle the work assigned it? Does it let you take a break, without requiring you to hold its hand all the time? Good Team Member How many people are on … Read more
There seems to be a lot of talk lately about paying down technical debt. Some talk about how after the debt has built up enough it would be best to just scrap the system and rewrite. Some talk about how rewriting is never the solution. Others talk about using this debt as a tool. Many … Read more