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Architecture Weekly #122 - 10th April 2023

Oskar Dudycz

Apr 10, 2023

Welcome to the new week!

I recently realised that treating event stores as key-value databases makes explaining Event Sourcing much easier. Let’s assume that and treat the key as a record id and data as an ordered list of events. Isn’t then much easier to reason about the performance, or whether they’re more database or messaging tool? I wrote about that longer in my last article:

Event stores are key-value databases, and why that matters

Looks like this Architecture Weekly is focused on DevOps resources. I think that we’re still in the transition phase. In theory, our tooling grew more mature, but on the other hand, it also got much more overwhelming. Too often, we relished the power we got that we forgot why this approach was introduced: to streamline software delivery and collaboration between all involved parts. Building the Platform for the sake of doing that should not be the end goal. Business value delivery should be. Read more:

The NewStack - Platform Engineering Is Not about Building Fancy UIs

The foundational aspect of the proper DevOps process is observability, tracing and understanding of how our system behaves. We have a plethora of tools, but can we use them well? If we can set them up, can we also connect the dots with the business process and understand precisely the technical information and how they impact our business? Check those articles for inspiration on how others are making that happen:

See also on how to design event flows to improve observability:

The next quite often missed or even ignored aspect is security. We understand how to inject configuration into our services, but we forget that rotating them continuously is essential to avoid breaches. Read:

Justin Smith - The Three R’s of Enterprise Security: Rotate, Repave, and Repair

Speaking about security and breaches. See, even the biggest ones are getting them from stupid mistakes. And when such breaches happen, they’re usually big bangs:

Wiz - BingBang: AAD misconfiguration led to Bing.com results manipulation and account takeover

Still, as Gerald Weinberg said: “No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem.“. Collaboration between different people, building a set of standard practices and shared understanding is an essential part not only of DevOps culture but also in general software delivery. So it’s always worth learning not only about tech but also about humans:

Check also other links!

Cheers
Oskar

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