In this second post of a series dedicated to ASP.NET Web Forms modernization, follow a discussion of data access layer considerations.

APIs used to be the agents of change between systems. Now they’re accelerating digital transformation and driving business-critical use cases.

Oracle Databases are used for traditional enterprise applications and departmental systems in large enterprises. Debezium connector for Oracle is a great way to capture data changes from the transactional system of record and make them available for application use.

The second part of how to model, structure, and organize your Infrastructure-as-Code AWS CDK Project. Building from scratch until a CI/CD pipeline composition, all the cloud component resources, and services at AWS Cloud.

A sample of how to model, structure, and organize your Infrastructure-as-Code AWS CDK Project. Building from scratch until a CI/CD pipeline composition, all the cloud component resources, and services at AWS Cloud.

Welcome to my journal documenting my experience building a geo-distributed app in Java from scratch. Here, I’ll share my first results and any challenges.

Follow this overview of how the concerns of Authentication and SSO come together to plug into Authorization (mainly in the scope of API authorization).

How to use this toolkit to test your upgrade process and how it helps you upgrade your TiDB with ease and happiness.

NAS is not a new technology but still plays a crucial role in providing capable data storage and accessibility through centralized storage connected to a network.

In this blog, we will figure out why you should avoid using UTF-8 in MySQL and what to choose instead.

Date/time logic has many edge cases. Here, we'll look at strategies to bend the clock to your will for better testability.

This article was originally published on 1/5/14 The countdown for 2015 has already begun and so are the businesses eager to roll out new strategies and technical innovations with the New Year. Especially the entrepreneurs. 2014 has been a year of many ups and downs for most ventures due to the various algorithm updates rolled out by the search giant. Yet, overall 2014 has been a successful year for many companies that focused on adaptation to the technological shifts. 2015 too would be a year when many ventures would be a part of this transition – either to sustain or compete in the competitive market. Learning and recruiting people with new skills and implementing new tactics would be vital look-out next year. Considering the evolution in technology, virtualization, or rather cloud-based virtualization and remote management can be a key consideration for businesses that haven’t upgraded their IT to it yet. With the ever-increasing number of online stores and eCommerce sites, a strong emphasis would be given to scalable services – preferably automatic scaling. 2014 indeed saw growth in the adoption of cloud technology and mobile platform for business websites, moreover it’s also proved beneficial not just to buyers but also to retailers using eCommerce to run their operations. Talking about hosting, the term ‘cloud computing or cloud hosting’ was heard from almost every corner of the Industry. Due to the consistent advancements in the area of virtualization and remote operations, conventional organizations and new firms are increasingly opting for similar hosting solutions today. Let’s take a sneak peek at the two types of virtualization solutions that we have access to today. Cloud Hosting: Does it Make Sense? From a cost perspective, there is no doubt that cloud hosting is beginning to make a lot more sense for many website developers. They understand that they need to do something about getting their websites up, and the best way to make it happen is to use cloud hosting. It is so cost-effective because there are now plenty of services that offer cloud hosting to those who need it. You don’t really need to shop around for this service in the ways that you used to, and the costs have come down considerably as the infrastructure has improved. Thus, you may want to look into this as a possible way to spend some of your time and resources. Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting – VPS in simple terms is where a single physical server is divided into smaller virtual servers using virtualization technology. For that purpose, VMWare and HyperV (hardware hypervisors) are the two technologies that actually made a mark in 2014. Having a physical dedicated server virtualized using one of the hypervisors, allows the creation of multiple servers that inherit the properties of the base server - each acting as a dedicated server in itself (in a virtual environment). One of the major benefits of VPS hosting is, that dedicated resources can be assigned to the virtual machines. Much similar to that of a physical server. Pros – It offers flexibility along with complete control/root access to the server. VPS is typically less expensive as compared to cloud hosting. The user can modify the settings on the server to adjust it according to the requirements. Through a shared environment, VPS clients can take leverage of dedicated environments with specific resource allocations. With VPS hosting, dedicated IPs can be allocated to each account. Unless it is a hardware failure, any virtual server is affected and exposed to downtime, the other servers aren’t affected. As users get root access to the particular server, one can choose the operating system and install any required software which makes it quite easy to manage the VPS. Cons – If there is any problem with the VPS server and needs maintenance or rebooting or has a hard drive error then all accounts hosted on it would face downtime. Despite the inheritance of characteristics of a dedicated server, computing resources of the physical server are still distributed across VPS accounts. Hence, ill operations run by a neighboring account can pose an impact on your server. Though one can choose an operating system (OS) only one OS can run on each physical server. Storage space on each server is limited and so when your VPS reaches the maximum capacity, arrangements for additional space or migration to new hardware remain the only option. Which again means downtime. Cloud Server Hosting – Slightly an enhanced version of virtualization, a cloud server makes use of multiple servers which are connected together in a single network – known as a cluster which is backed by RAID configurations. Users would still have root access to the Virtual machine, but in this case, the resources are pulled from a massive pool and released back when unused. Pros – Cloud hosting offers greater flexibility as it is extended to multiple physical machines pooling in their resources into one. The storage space as well as the other resources can be scaled up/down as per requirements. If any physical server runs down or fails, the virtual machines or VMs have transported automatically to other servers within the same cluster. Hence avoiding the downtime resulting in the cloud hosting being more reliable. Since a VM uses resources from a massive pool, the question of running out of it is negligible. This helps ensure optimum performance – even during peak hours. Each client on the cloud has the privilege to choose the operating system individually. Though a load of other cloud customers increases, the computing resources – RAM, CPU performance, and bandwidth being pooled in by multiple physical servers, result in a near unlimited supply of resources. The cloud server is easier to suffice custom requirements. It means clients can choose the OS, firewall, control panels, and other applications. Cons – There’s only one disadvantage of cloud in comparison to a VPS, ie, it's a little more expensive. As a matter of fact, both the solutions have been popular in the year 2014 despite their individual benefits and demerits. Where VPSs were opted for by websites for whom scalability and up-time weren’t much of a concern, while on the other hand, the sites that did require them opted for cloud solutions. A few service providers even offered a pay-per-use billing model in Cloud, where users would only pay for the resources that their sites/applications have actually used. With further work being put into the development of the Cloud, and an increasing volume of applications depending more on the cloud, 2015 is expected to be more of a cloud-friendly year.

Last year we saw the launch of a new Web programming language Dart - Structured Web Programming from Google. A very interesting approach to support web application development. Not so long after Go, Groovy, Ruby, Scala, << Name your DSL here >>; we see Dart. Is it a good thing to have at least one programming language to solve one problem? The answer is, like we already know, it depends. Stay Away From “Do it Yourself” It is your choice as to if you will try to do things yourself or allow the truly seasoned professionals to help out. Some decide that they are going to try to go it alone when they are programming something new, but this often ends up in a less than desirable place. It may even be more expensive than just hiring an expert who can help you get it programmed for you in the first place. Most people do not go it alone with the vast majority of important services in their life, so why should they ever attempt to do so when they are looking at how to create a website? It is best to avoid making this mistake, and just try to make some progress towards your goals by hiring people who truly know how to help you make the progress that you need to make. Some important backgrounds you should know about the multi-programming language paradigm are the following: 1. You can read Martin Fowler's article about language-oriented programming with language workbenches which enables you to write small programming languages easily. In this article I see everyone writing their small language, everywhere. In this concept, we see DSL (Domain Specific Language) as the future of our programming activities. Source: http://martinfowler.com/articles/languageWorkbench.html 2. Neal Ford talked about Polyglot Programming, combining multiple programming languages in application development. Later Mr. Fowler added this paradigm with Polyglot Persistence, using different types of databases within one application. Source: http://memeagora.blogspot.com/2006/12/polyglot-programming.html and http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PolyglotPersistence.html Since 2006 I already discussed and collected some experiences in multi programming language paradigm: 1. I remember a “hot” discussion in 2006 with Sebastian Meyen, chief editor of JavaMagazin Germany, also the biggest organizor of Java Conference JAX. We agreed to see the future of programming in a multi-language paradigm concept. I also said that all those languages will be based on Java VM. I also told him that one day SAP will move ABAP as a language that can be run within the Java VM, so just another language within the Java environment, with no two different personalities anymore. Today we see the beginning of this in the project called Caffeine ABAP. Source: https://cw.sdn.sap.com/cw/groups/caffeine 2. Also in 2006 I had a project in which we also used different kinds of languages and also created our own DSL: Java for the most implementation stuff UML for the design of the business objects. We generate a lot of things using the concept of MDA (Model Driven Architecture) Groovy for a lot of things, especially for writing unit tests Based on ANTLR we create our own DSL for some aspects of the application It was really exciting and we had some very good programmers in the project. The result was a very nice and flexible product, just as what we expected at the beginning of the project. Please read this article in the German language for more information: http://www.sigs.de/publications/os/2009/02/dewanto_egger_OS_02_09.pdf So after all those nice things about the multi-language paradigm, I told you, why does this suck at the end? Here are some reasons from my point of view: 1. As typical in application development the problem comes first in the maintenance phase after all the capable programmers leave the project. Did you, programming language creators ever try to teach a new programming language to a “normal”, 9 till 5 programmers? I’m not talking about 9 (am) till 9 (pm) programmers who love to learn new languages. It is definitely tough to be proficient in one programming language. This is comparable with the languages we speak every day. I’m not a native English speaker, so I’m quite sure that I made a lot of syntax and grammar errors in this article. It is possible to be able to speak three or four languages perfectly but this is an exception. 2. Did you ever try to maintain a big Struts web application with AJAX? Just try to add functionality and you will end up creating and editing a lot of files: Action and Form files, Struts XML configuration files, JavaScript files with JSON, and also HTML or JSP files. Can you imagine adding Groovy, Scala, and Dart additionally into that web app? The complexity of such a project is very high. 3. Creating a new programming language means that you also have to build the environment for it. Good IDE, good documentation, good community support, a clear roadmap, and backward compatibility are some points to be done. Groovy is a bad example of this. In the early version of this language, the editor for Eclipse was really bad. After a while, they improved the editor but they made a lot of basic changes in the language so your old groovy applications do not work anymore. You are punished if you update to the new version. This never happens to Java. You still can compile Java 1.1 applications with Java 6 compiler. 4. Before you are creating your own DSL with e.g. ANTLR ask those language Gurus first, how hard it is to maintain a programming language for the long term. Before you discuss with them don’t ever create your own DSL. Especially if you are working for SME (Small and Medium-sized Enterprise). With a small team and small budget, you will never ever maintain your own language decently. So in year 2012, six years after my support to Polyglot Programming, I hope to see following things happen: 1. One language for all aspects in one application is the best concept ever. I name this as “One for All Programming Language paradigm”. Just like we don’t use English as a technical language, German as a literate language, and Indonesian as a community language, to be able to communicate internationally with each other we just use English pragmatically for all aspects of our life. In Germany, you need to speak German in all aspects to be able to communicate with others. My best solution so far is Java + XML, that’s it, no more, no less. No mixing with Groovy, Dart, Ruby, Scala, <> in one application. Especially if you are working as a contractor, please don’t try to use all those languages just for a small Java web application. I don’t say that you should not use the other languages at all. The only thing which is important is not to mix those languages in one application. In SME you may also want to use just one programming language for all your applications. 2. Concept like GWT (Java to JavaScript compiler) or XMLC (XML compiler which compiles XML, HTML to Java classes) is great. You can work just in plain Java. Guice with all Java and no XML is also a great solution (I know that SpringFramework is also doing this with Annotations). Android is great because it uses Java as its application programming language. In conclusion, I can only hope to see more such pure and plain Java solutions in 2012!

Performance is a big focus of the W3C Web Performance Working Group. Check out these APIs which provide a reference for web performance and W3C standards.

The source code The slides for the talk "Mobile First!" is the new cry of web designers worldwide. But how do you do it? Do you have to scrap all of your current web skills? Is it magic created by wizard-like designers which could never be understood by mere mortals? Believe it or not, with the combination of jQuery Mobile and CSS3 Media Queries, you can easily create a site that looks good on a phone, tablet, or desktop. Does Mobile-First Still Matter? Yes! You still need to look to design all features of your programs with a mobile-first mentality. People are spending increasing amounts of time on their phones, and they expect the companies that create products for them to come up with something that will enable them to continue to view those products from their phones. If you are unable to do this for them, they may simply move on to another company that can provide them with that kind of functionality. You have a lot of choices to make when it comes to the specific features that you will use and embrace, but you need to consider how going mobile first can help bolster the chances of your application being used by the masses. General Responsive Web Features The web began as responsive. Now admittedly, the web didn't do very much, so being responsive when the Internet was mainly documents was easy. HTML documents naturally wrapped to the next line and flowed down the page. Along the way, things changed. Developers began designing sites in tools like PhotoShop and wanted perfect pixel renderings of those designs. The problem with pixels is that they are not very flexible. It has always been possible to use percentages instead of pixels, but they were clumsier to work with, so pixels remained the favorite. With HTML5 and CSS3 there is more support for responsive design. Lets Meta Tags Meta tags have been the favorite of the SEO crowd for some time. Meta tags are used to define keywords, descriptions, and even redirects. Here are some rules about meta tags: They always go in the section of the page They are never displayed They consist mostly of key/value pairs: name = key and content = value Viewport The viewport is a special type of meta tag which defines the screen of a mobile device. In the example program the viewport meta tag looks like: The attributes above mean: width=device-width - converts the pixels to CSS pixels initial-scale=1 - sets the scale level user-scalable=no - turns off scaling If the initial scale is some other value than 1, the zoom can be smaller or larger. If user-scalable is set to yes, then the user sets the zoom level by tapping, pinching, or whatever zoom gesture the browser supports. Media Query Media Queries are the workhorse of responsive design. A media query is a media type and at least one expression that limits the style sheets' scope. Here is an example: @media screen and (max-width: 1024px) and (orientation:portrait) { } The above media query means: For a screen media type Define the classes only if The width is less than 1023 AND the orientation is portrait The media query begins with @media then a media type, in this case, screen. Other types are all, braille, embossed, handheld, print, project, speech, tty, and tv. You can compose complex media queries using logical operators like not, and, and only. not - is used to negate an entire media query and - used to combine multiple media features together into a single media query only - used to apply a style only if the entire query matches Finally, there is the comma-separated list which behaves like an operator. If any media queries return true, the style sheets get applied. One pattern for applying the media queries is to define the query for the narrowest device first, then define it for a tablet, and finally a desktop. Now all of these definitions are pretty loose and open to interpretation. You may need to adjust them to fit your needs. If you run the demo on a high pixel phone like a Nexus 4, which has a display of 1280x768 resolution, why doesn't it display like a desktop? The key is the viewport meta tag. This tag, which is read by mobile browsers, redefines the pixels as CSS pixels. The precise number of CSS pixels varies by device, but on the iPhone, it is 320 and on the Nexus 4 it is 384, both of which are less than the minimum of 480 pixels to be defined as a tablet. jQuery Mobile Features So far we haven't looked at jQuery Mobile features. From the get go jQuery Mobile has had responsive features. Some of which are: grid - a simple way to build CSS-based columns that can also be responsive tables - selectively hide or shows table columns based on the display width panels - create a hidden page that slides left or right to reveal itself Grids Grids have been with jQuery Mobile since the beginning. They are essentially self sizing columns that dynamically resize themselves when the size of the page changes. The number of available columns ranges from two to five. To change the number of available columns simply change the class on the root p then add or remove a p from the collection. ui-grid-a = 2 columns ui-grid-b = 3 columns ui-grid-c = 4 columns ui-grid-d = 5 columns Tables Tables were added with the release of jQuery Mobile 1.3.0. They allow for the responsive display of tabular data. There are two basic types of tables: reflow which is the default and column toggle. Reflow tables lay the table data horizontally until it reaches a minimum size, then all of the data for each row is grouped together and it re-flows down the page. In column toggle mode, each column of a table can be given a separate priority, when the data can no longer fit horizontally, the column with the lowest priority number which is still visible is hidden. This continues until a minimum size is reached or there is only one column remaining. Panels A panel is a hidden page that reveals itself by sliding from the left or right onto the page. It can support nearly any jQuery Mobile widget. When the panel is displayed, clicking anywhere else on the page will close it. Best Practices Design styles beginning with "mobile first", then go wider Use "min-width" to constrain styles Prefer percentages and ems to pixels

Nowadays Quarkus is known as Supersonic Subatomic Java. It provides a lot of features to facilitate build and deployment.

I wrote about cypher’s MERGE function a couple of weeks ago, and over the last few days, I’ve been exploring how it works with schema indexes and unique constraints. An Exciting Time to Be a Developer There is so much that could be said about the merging of Neo4j and Cypher right now, but it is certainly reasonable to point out that this merger will likely result in many exciting developments in the programming world. Programmers virtually always appreciate it when they are given the products and tools they require to get their job done properly, and now is the time for steps like this to be taken. The fact that Neo4J and Cypher have decided to merge means that the upsides of both will soon be apparent. You deserve to use all of the best tools to make informed decisions about your next software project, and a great way to make it happen is to use what has been given to you regarding product functionality. This is to say that you can use both the upsides of Neo4J and Cypher to come up with the exact tools you need to make a difference in your sphere of influence. Could Other Products Soon Merge? There has been some strong demand for other software development products to consider merging. Coders and programmers want to use their favorite projects in exactly how they were meant to be used, and this means getting them to merge in ways that are useful to the programmers. They just want to be able to squeeze as much use out of each program as they possibly can. You want to make sure that you can see what is going on with your codes as you are directly applying them to whichever problem you are working on at this time. To be sure, it is not an easy task, but no one ever said it would be easy. The important thing is that you get the work done so that you can start to become more productive in the coding you are doing now. A common use case with Neo4j is to model users and events where an event could be a tweet, Facebook post, or Pinterest pin. The model might look like this: We’d like to ensure that we don’t get duplicate users or events, and MERGE provides the semantics to do this: MERGE (u:User {id: {userId}) MERGE (e:Event {id: {eventId}) MERGE (u)-[:CREATED_EVENT]->(m) RETURN u, e We’d like to ensure that we don’t get duplicate users or events and MERGE provides the semantics to do this: MERGE ensures that a pattern exists in the graph. Either the pattern already exists, or it needs to be created. import org.neo4j.cypher.javacompat.ExecutionEngine; import org.neo4j.cypher.javacompat.ExecutionResult; import org.neo4j.graphdb.GraphDatabaseService; import org.neo4j.graphdb.factory.GraphDatabaseFactory; import org.neo4j.helpers.collection.MapUtil; import org.neo4j.kernel.impl.util.FileUtils; ... public class MergeTime { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { String pathToDb = "/tmp/foo"; FileUtils.deleteRecursively(new File(pathToDb)); GraphDatabaseService db = new GraphDatabaseFactory().newEmbeddedDatabase( pathToDb ); final ExecutionEngine engine = new ExecutionEngine( db ); ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool( 50 ); final Random random = new Random(); final int numberOfUsers = 10; final int numberOfEvents = 50; int iterations = 100; final List userIds = generateIds( numberOfUsers ); final List eventIds = generateIds( numberOfEvents ); List merges = new ArrayList<>( ); for ( int i = 0; i < iterations; i++ ) { Integer userId = userIds.get(random.nextInt(numberOfUsers)); Integer eventId = eventIds.get(random.nextInt(numberOfEvents)); merges.add(executor.submit(mergeAway( engine, userId, eventId) )); } for ( Future merge : merges ) { merge.get(); } executor.shutdown(); ExecutionResult userResult = engine.execute("MATCH (u:User) RETURN u.id as userId, COUNT(u) AS count ORDER BY userId"); System.out.println(userResult.dumpToString()); } private static Runnable mergeAway(final ExecutionEngine engine, final Integer userId, final Integer eventId) { return new Runnable() { @Override public void run() { try { ExecutionResult result = engine.execute( "MERGE (u:User {id: {userId})\n" + "MERGE (e:Event {id: {eventId})\n" + "MERGE (u)-[:CREATED_EVENT]->(m)\n" + "RETURN u, e", MapUtil.map( "userId", userId, "eventId", eventId) ); // throw away for ( Map row : result ) { } } catch ( Exception e ) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }; } private static List generateIds( int amount ) { List ids = new ArrayList<>(); for ( int i = 1; i <= amount; i++ ) { ids.add( i ); } return ids; } } We create a maximum of 10 users and 50 events and then do 100 iterations of random (user, event) pairs with 50 concurrent threads. Afterward, we execute a query that checks how many users of each id have been created and get the following output: +----------------+ | userId | count | +----------------+ | 1 | 6 | | 2 | 3 | | 3 | 4 | | 4 | 8 | | 5 | 9 | | 6 | 7 | | 7 | 5 | | 8 | 3 | | 9 | 3 | | 10 | 2 | +----------------+ 10 rows Next, I added a schema index on users and events to see if that would make any difference, something Javad Karabi recently asked on the user group. CREATE INDEX ON :User(id) CREATE INDEX ON :Event(id) We wouldn’t expect this to make a difference as schema indexes don’t ensure uniqueness, but I ran it anyway t and got the following output: +----------------+ | userId | count | +----------------+ | 1 | 2 | | 2 | 9 | | 3 | 7 | | 4 | 2 | | 5 | 3 | | 6 | 7 | | 7 | 7 | | 8 | 6 | | 9 | 5 | | 10 | 3 | +----------------+ 10 rows If we want to ensure the uniqueness of users and events, we need to add a unique constraint on the id of both of these labels: CREATE CONSTRAINT ON (user:User) ASSERT user.id IS UNIQUE CREATE CONSTRAINT ON (event:Event) ASSERT event.id IS UNIQUE Now if we run the test, we’ll only end up with one of each user: +----------------+ | userId | count | +----------------+ | 1 | 1 | | 2 | 1 | | 3 | 1 | | 4 | 1 | | 5 | 1 | | 6 | 1 | | 7 | 1 | | 8 | 1 | | 9 | 1 | | 10 | 1 | +----------------+ 10 rows We’d see the same result if we ran a similar query checking for the uniqueness of events. As far as I can tell, this duplication of nodes that we merge on only happens if you try to create the same node twice concurrently. Once the node has been created, we can use MERGE with a non-unique index, and a duplicate node won’t get created. All the code from this post is available as a gist if you want to play around with it.

This article was originally published on 3/19/15

The author conducts two tests with differing service delay times to measure any difference in performance between reactive and synchronous programming.

Learn more about discussing backend for front-end.