Software Architecture Newsletter #1 – October 2020
Software Architecture Newsletter #1
Welcome to the first edition of the Software Architecture Newsletter!
Following a lot of discussions, either in the public Facebook group (Software Architects Discussion) and also in private messages, I’ve decided to create this newsletter, which will be the best source of information for Software Architects and Software-Architects-to-be.
In fact, anyone who is interested in software in general can find interesting nuggets in this newsletter, which I hope to publish monthly.
—————————-
So what will you find here?
In this monthly newsletter I’m going to include references to interesting articles, discussions, events, books and anything else I think might be of interest to you.
The topics in this newsletter will be everything that is Software Architecture-related, including: technology, cloud, patterns and practices, trends, etc.
Don’t worry, I’m going to keep everything short and to the point. After all – we’re all quite busy…
Oh, and if you found something interesting that you think should be included here – drop me a mail at memi@memilavi.com
So, without further ado – here’s the first edition of the Software Architecture Newsletter.
—————————-
Architecture
State of the API Report 2020 – Postman has released their State of the API report for 2020. Now, since Postman makes its living from API-based apps, the findings might need to be taken with a grain of salt, but still – a fascinating reading. Some of the key findings:
– More than 80% of the surveyed orgs claimed to first define or develop their API before developing the underlying code.
– 93% of the respondents still use REST API as their major Web API. The more surprising figure is that SOAP (yes, the one from 1998) is used by more organizations than newly created, trending Web APIs (SOAP: 33.4%, GraphQL: 22.5%, gRPC: 9.5%)
– Microservices are the most exciting technology for the respondents. 48.7% claimed they’re most excited by it, followed closely by Kubernetes (43.6%)
So what can we take from it? Learn about Microservices, and embrace the API-first approach. This is where the industry is going.
Take a look at the full report here.
Project Nucleus – Microsoft announced a new sync technology on its Ignite event last month, named Project Nucleus. This framework enables syncing web content with a central data store easily and blazingly fast. There aren’t a lot of technical details about the underlying technology behind Nucleus, but according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley it’s based on a SQL Lite on the client side, and exposes API.
Project Nucleus is in its early stage, but it’s worth keeping an eye on it. Assuming it will realize its potential, we might be looking here at something that can change the way we design web apps.
Cloud
Google Cloud Introduces API Gateway – Google announced, in its latest Google Next virtual event, the public beta of the much awaited API Gateway. API Gateway allows managing backend APIs using a fully managed service, allowing scalability, performance, monitoring and security, and utilizing various kinds of backend APIs, including serverless, App Engine, Compute Engine and more.
API Gateway is a core concept of the Microservices architecture pattern, and this announcement is definitely a welcome addition to the Google Cloud’s collection of managed service. (BTW – other clouds, such as AWS and Azure, already have such a service, and for quite a long time).
Read the full announcement here.
Cyber Security
Virtual Appliance Security State Is… – A study conducted by Orca Security found that more than 30% of the over 2,000 virtual appliances scanned got an F or D grade, meaning their security is either Failed or Poor.
Virtual appliances are virtual machine images found in major clouds’ marketplaces, and are often used as a boilerplate template for common tasks. For example, you can find virtual appliance for Splunk, or Moodle, and using it saves a lot of time.
But it looks like it comes with a cost, and this cost is less-than-perfect-secured system.
The bottom line of this report for the Software Architect is that before recommending any virtual appliance as part of the cloud architecture – better take a look at this report and see how secure it is.
Read the full report here (PDF)
Discussions
Queue vs Message Bus – An interesting (read: heated) discussion broke in our Facebook group about the differences between Queue and Message Bus. They’re both transporting messages, both have publishers and subscribers, and both can be implemented by the same tools (ie. RabbitMQ). So what’s the difference?
Chime in here.
Book
Designing Web APIs by Brenda Jin, Saurabh Sahni and Amir Shevat, O’Reily
One of the best books I’ve read about Web APIs.
This books covers many types of Web APIs (And note that Web API != REST API), and does so in a practical, easy to read manner.
Knowing one of the authors (Amir) I know this book will be great, and wasn’t disappointed… Grab it now on Amazon.
———————————————————————————-
So, that was the first edition of the Software Architecture Newsletter (temp name).
I hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to suggest and comment on it, simply be replying to this mail.
Also, if you created a unique content you think can be included here – drop me a note!
I’m looking forward for your feedback, and hope to make this newsletter the go-to place for every Software Architect and Software Architect-to-be.
