Tag Archives: Microservices

Microservices Patterns 2nd edition in the works

24 Sunday Aug 2025

Posted by in Book Reviews, Books, General, manning, Technology

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Back in 2018, Manning published Chris Richardson‘s Microservices Patterns book. In many respects, this book is the microservices version of the famous Gang of Four patterns book. The exciting news is that Chris is working on a second edition.

One key difference between the GoF book and this is that engaging with patterns like Inversion of Control, Factories, and so on isn’t impacted by considerations around architecture, organization, and culture.

While the foundational ideas of microservices are established, the techniques for designing and deploying have continued to evolve and mature. If you follow Chris through social media, you’ll know he has, in the years since the book’s first edition, worked with numerous organisations, training and helping them engage effectively with microservices. As a result, a lot of processes and techniques that Chris has identified and developed with customers are grounded in real practical experience.

As the book is in its early access phase (MEAP), not all chapters are available yet, so plenty to look forward to.

So even if you have the 1st edition and work with microservice patterns, the updates will, I think, offer insights that could pay dividends.

If you’re starting your software career or considering the adoption of microservices (and Chris will tell you it isn’t always the right answer), I highly recommend getting a copy, as with the 1st edition, the 2nd will become a must-read book.

Bucharest Tech Week Conference – Monoliths in a Microservices World

29 Monday May 2023

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Last week I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to present at the Software Architecture Summit as part of the Bucharest Tech Week conference. My presentation, Monoliths in a Microservice World, was all new content that, by chance, worked well, bringing together a number of points made by other speakers. The presentation aimed at the challenges of adopting Microservices and whether Monoliths had a place in modern IT, and for those of us not fortunate enough to be working for one of the poster children for microservices like Netflix, Amazon, etc, how we can get our existing monoliths playing nicely with microservices.

The conference may not have the size of Devoxx (yet), but it certainly had quality with presenters from globally recognized organizations such as Google (Abdelkfettah Sghiouar), Thoughtworks (Arne Lapõnin), Vodafone (IT Services business unit – _VOIS – Stefan Ciobanu), Bosch, as well as subsidiaries of companies like DXC (Luxsoft) and rapid growth SaaS vendor LucaNet.

As a presenter, you’re always wanting to walk the tightrope of being at the biggest conferences to maximize reach for your message while at the same time wanting the experience to be friendly and personable, which often means slightly smaller conferences. The Software Architecture Summit balanced that really well; rather than lots of smaller breakout sessions, the conference focussed on a single auditorium for a large number of attendees, with presentation slots varying in length depending upon the subject matter. If a session didn’t interest you, then there were plenty of exhibitors to talk with – although, from what I saw, the auditorium was full during the sessions, reflecting the interest in the content.

“Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live.” – John F. Woods

Quote of the conference – as cited by @DevPaco (Paco van Beckhoven)

The conference organizers (Universum) certainly put in the effort to ensure the presenters were looked after. It is the little touches that really make the difference, such as taking care of logistics which can be as simple as organizing airport transfers. A letter of thanks will be waiting for you at the hotel after the event, organizing a meal for the presenters at a local restaurant and so on.

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Oracle Developer Meetup – London Feb 19

05 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Dev Meetup, development, General, Helidon, Oracle, Technology

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Last night was the first Oracle Developer Meetup in London for 2019.  We were very fortunate to have Tomas Langer fly over to talk about the new micro container/framework being developed as an open-source solution by Oracle.

 

Oracle Developer Meet-up - Tomas Langer presenting on Helidon

Tomas, opened by explaining the evolution of the micro-profile being championed by the Eclipse Foundation who are now the guardians of J2EE also known as Jakarta and how the J2EE and Micro-Profile standards compare (in simplistic terms – micro-profile is J2EE stripped back to be simple and support what is typically needed in a micro-service world).

The presentation then went onto compare Helidon SE and Helidon MP (micro-profile).  What was really pleasing is that with a couple of exceptions everything that Helidon MP can do, can be done in the SE edition, the difference being that for SE you have to implement more code, rather than the auto-magic of annotations, but in return you have a Reactive Java platform with a development paradigm which relates to JavaScript Express.

In addition to talking about what can be done, Tomas described the kinds of features being developed, this includes:

  • Bringing micro-profile support up to the very latest specification,
  • More reactive persistence technologies support,

With the scene set, Tomas then worked through a series of live code scenarios starting with a clean slate and building Hello World in both the SE & MP models illustrating the differences in approach.  This was then built upon to add the following capabilities:

You can get the complete example which uses Helidon in both configurations from Tomas GitHub.

In addition to Helidon itself on GitHub, there are resources provided include rich documentation and examples of each key feature.  Plus a Slack community, that if you contact any of the Helidon team will get you invited allowing you to discuss with the development team how to do things along with other developers using Helidon.

Tomas can be contracted via @Langer_Tomas.  Helidon project also has its own Twitter account – Helidon Project

Helidon itself can be found at:

I have previously blogged on Helidon at Exploring Helidon – Part 1

 

UKOUG Conference 2018

04 Tuesday Dec 2018

Posted by in API Platform CS, APIs & microservices, General, OIC - ICS, Oracle, Technology

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With the start of December comes the UK Oracle User Group conference, or to be more precise the Independent UKOUG.  This year the conference is back in Blackpool, a slightly smaller venue than the ICC in Birmingham, but in many respects that made the event feel more vibrant and busy.

The user group also announced some of the changes it is making going forwards reflecting the changing needs of its members – SIGs being largely superseded by multi-stream single day events (Summits) with the Call for Papers for the first of these here.  A wider list of Oracle related Calls for Papers is available here.

Of course being a UKOUG Volunteer, I have been presenting and co-presenting.  The slides from my presentation sessions can be found at:

This was an abridged version of the an update on my presentation here 

My second presentation was a review of Oracle Integration Cloud, in which I presented some customer use cases of OCI  as part of a wider presentation on OIC by Sid Joshi. 

This was followed on the second day with two API based sessions, the first being a deep dive into custom API Policies on the Oracle API Platform.

The final session, was another short one looking at Apiary which was primarily a demo of what the solution can do.

On top of trying to keep up with my usual workload – a very hectic couple of days.

London Oracle Developer Meet-up – November 18

19 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by in development, General

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Another Oracle Developer Meet-up took place in London yesterday. This meet-up focused on Terraform and Microservices. The summary of the evening slides:

Chris Hollies’ slides can be found at here.  As demo’s aren’t included in the deck, the following videos are alternatives:

Our second session, that I presented on how we can establish paths of transition that make it easy to adopt microservices. The presentation material for this is available here:

Microservices Patterns Book

13 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by in Books, General, mindmap

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Earlier this year, I wrote a short post on Chris Richardson’s book Microservice Patterns (Praise for Microservice Patterns). When I read the book I mind mapped my notes which can be seen at Mindmap Index or access directly here.  The mind map is no substitute but should act as a reasonable aide-memoire.

We would highly recommend getting and reading the book.

Praise for Microservice Patterns

18 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Book Reviews, Books, General, manning

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richardson-mp-meap-hiI’ve been reading Chris Richardson’s new book Mixroservice Patterns published by Manning (here or here). Whilst I haven’t finished the book yet, I have read enough to feel I can provide worthwhile observation.

The book is supported by Chris’ website microservices.io which provides the patterns and related content in summarised form – great for a memory jogger and quick reference, but doesn’t make a substitute for the book.

When it comes to the book, Chris’ writing is extremly engaging whilst economic with its language – no long passages when a short sentence can convey everything necessary (unlike this one for example 🙂 ). For example, in three short paragraphs is an explination as to why there is a tendancy for IT people to point at particular technologies or techniques as silver bullets. As a result is incredibly informative and points to sources that inform the thinking – such references can be as diverse as Sam Newman’s Building Microservices to the (real) architect Christopher Alexander and Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind).

The book is grounded in honest real world thinking being upfront and clearly pointing to when Microservices aren’t the right answer, to talking about the difficulties that can be expected in working with microservices. This won’t surprise anyone who has heard Chris speaking (here for example).

A recommended read.

microservicepatternlanguage

Registries in a Monolith World

15 Tuesday May 2018

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I have a new article about service registries that follows on from the Article I wrote last year on the Oracle Technology Network (see here). The article has been posted on the Capgemini website – here.

Microservices are not simple

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in APIs & microservices, development, General, Technology

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It’s a bit controversial to say ‘Microservices are not simple’ given much is said about using Microservices to simplify and accelerate software delivery. So, how can this statement be made? It is a point actually stated in Chris Richardson’s excellent new book Microservice Patterns (avalable here and here), indirectly in Eric Evan’s Domain Driven Design (here). Martin Fowler in one his blogs says that they come at a premium (here). So, I’m not the first to say this, and wont be the last.

But the assertion that Microservices done right are simpler, and allow rapid delivery and evolution of solutions – a bit of a contradiction. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at this …

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I’ll be presenting at UKOUG Conference with …

18 Saturday Nov 2017

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I will be presenting at the UKOUG Conference this year as an Oracle Ace and Snr Consultant from a award winning Partner of the Year. I’ll be speaking about:

  • ICS (now part of Oracle Integration Cloud)
  • Microservices and WebLogic
  • Oracle Messaging Cloud Service

I also have colleagues from Capgemini covering IaaS and SaaS among other things. I hope that we see you in Birmingham. Full details of my sessions :

Integration Cloud Service (ICS) Customer use Cases an Insight Into why ICS

04/12/2017 09:00 &

05/12/2017 09:00

In this session the presenters will talk about several applications of Integration Cloud Service (ICS) with customers from Capgemini. Whilst presenting the use cases, the reasoning for adopting ICS over other integration options will be explained and some of the design considerations that had to be addressed in the application of ICS. Whilst looking at the example cases, factors involved in deciding which iPaaS offering to adopt based on needs.
This session will be presented by Phil Wilkins one of the authors of the book Implementing Oracle Integration Cloud Service and supporting blog.

Microservices in a Monolith World

04/12/2017 15:25

Whilst microservices are mainstream thinking, many organisations make significant long term investments in application containers such as WebLogic and can be resistant to moving on from such investments. So how do we realise the microservice thinking with such constraints? This presentation looks at several approaches that can allow us to leverage microservice thinking without sacrificing the existing investment.

Why Should I Consider Oracle Messaging Cloud Service as an Integration Solution?

04/12/2017 17:55

Oracle Messaging Cloud Service is an often-overlooked service in the family of iPaaS options, but why? So, what makes it worth considering and makes it more contemporary than JMS with Java Cloud Service? This presentation will look at what differentiates MCS from JCS and Event Hub and others and does it offer that makes it distinct and worthwhile option?