A Java geek

Five Apache projects you probably didn't know about

In early 2021, I started to work on the Apache APISIX project. I have to admit that I had never heard about it before. In this post, I’d like to introduce some Apache projects that are less well-known than HTTPD or Kafka. Apache APISIX APISIX is an API Gateway. It builds upon OpenResty, a Lua layer built on top of the famous nginx reverse-proxy. APISIX adds abstractions to the mix, e.g., Route, Service, Upstream, and offers a plugin-based architecture.

Technical

Apache APISIX plugin priority, a leaky abstraction?

Apache APISIX is an API Gateway, which builds upon the OpenResty reverse-proxy to offer a plugin-based architecture. The main benefit of such an architecture is that it brings structure to the configuration of routes. It’s a help at scale, when managing hundreds or thousands of routes. In this post, I’d like to describe how plugins, priority, and phases play together and what pitfalls you must be aware of.

Technical

Canary releases with Apache APISIX

In a few words, the idea of canary releases is to deliver a new software version to only a fraction of the users, analyze the results, and decide whether to proceed further or not. If results are not aligned with expectations, roll back; if they are, increase the number of users exposed until all users benefit from the new version. In this post, I’d like to detail this introduction briefly, explain different ways to define the fraction, and show how to execute it with Apache APISIX.

Development

Chopping the monolith in a smarter way

In my previous post Chopping the Monolith, I explained that some parts of a monolith are pretty stable and only the fast-changing parts are worth being 'chopped.' I turned the post into a talk and presented it at several conferences. I think it’s pretty well received; I believe it’s because most developers understand, or have direct experience, that microservices are not a good fit for traditional organizations, as per Conway’s Law.

Development

A retrospective on Errors Management: where do we go from here?

Error management is a fact of life in software development as it is often inevitable and generated by different causes that also include incorrect or incomplete understanding of the requirements or even lack of knowledge of some tools or elements used during development.

Technical

Exploring the OpenTelemetry Collector

The OpenTelemetry Collector sits at the center of the OpenTelemetry architecture but is unrelated to the W3C Trace Context. In my tracing demo, I use Jaeger instead of the Collector. Yet, it’s ubiquitous, as in every OpenTelemetry-related post. I wanted to explore it further.

Development

API versioning

In my previous post Evolving your APIs, I mention the main API versioning approaches. During the talk of the same name, I sometimes get some questions on the subject. In this post, I’ll detail each of them. I assume readers know the reasons behind versioning, semantic versioning, and product lifecycle. If not, I encourage you to read a bit about these themes; in particular, chapter 24 of the excellent API Design Patterns book focuses on them.

Development

Feedback from calling Rust from Python

I got plenty of feedback on my post about Calling Rust from Python: Hacker News/r/python/r/rust Many comments mentioned pyo3, and I should use it instead of cooking my own. Thanks to the authors, I checked: in this post, I explain what it is and how I migrated my code. What is pyo3? Rust bindings for Python, including tools for creating native Python extension modules. Running and interacting with Python code from a Rust binary is also supported.

Development

Python "magic" methods - part 2

Let’s continue our exploration of Python’s magic methods in this second part of the series. This part will focus on numbers and containers, i.e., collections. You can read the first part here. Container-related methods Python provides the usual containers, e.g., lists, sets, and dictionaries. You can use the following methods when you want to implement your own. Common methods Containers have a size.

A Java geek

Nicolas Fränkel's blog