Services that incorporate streaming workloads often need to perform asynchronous requests to other services, or execute long-running, asynchronous operations. Examples include, inserting time-series data into a database, retrieving metadata for data enrichment, and executing complex business-workflows. Executing asynchronous operations in a streaming context, while maintaining backpressure in the stream, is…
When I was in elementary and secondary school, I did not enjoy reading or writing. Both were a chore. This probably had a lot to do with the fact that the rote learning and clerical curriculum that is core to modern, institutional education, was just not right for me. I…
You have probably had the experience of working tirelessly on a challenging, high-profile, business-critical project, for a significant period of time, chasing the satisfaction of completing the project successfully, only to have it be suddenly finished, completed with very little fanfare, or the gratifying catharsis that you were anticipating. You…
I have never had an internship. In fact, while I was an undergraduate in university, I never even had a summer job related to engineering or software development. I worked at a living-history museum for three summers, giving guided tours, performing artillery demonstrations, and playing bagpipes all day. It was…
In an earlier article, I detailed a number of techniques that can be used to maximize the throughput for individual Akka Streams. In a subsequent article, I also explored how an Akka Stream can be internally partitioned, in order to improve throughput. The techniques presented in these articles primarily involved…
In an earlier article, I detailed a number of techniques that can be used to maximize the throughput for Akka Streams. The article focused on improving the throughput of individual streams and the techniques mainly involved, but were not limited to, maximizing concurrency. A topic that I did not explore…
This three-part series expands on a talk that I gave at a conference focused on time-series data in 2018. This three-part series is focused on the challenges of elevating a time-series database from being just an IT application, used in the data center, to a critical operational technology, used throughout…
This three-part series expands on a talk that I gave at a conference focused on time-series data in 2018. The first article in this series explored challenges related to time when elevating a time-series database from simply an information technology, to being an operational technology, used through the enterprise. In…
This three-part series expands on a talk that I gave at a conference focused on time-series data in 2018. Many people are familiar with using a time-series database for collecting metrics from servers, applications, databases, and services running in a data center. A time-series database can provide valuable insights into…
The Akka Streams API is fantastic for building scalable applications that involve streaming workloads. It provides high-level semantics that naturally describe these workloads, and it handles the dynamics inherent to these systems, resulting in applications that are reliable and resilient. If you are not familiar with the Akka Streams API,…
Dan Pink's Drive is one of my favourite books. I also really like his RSA talk on the same subject. Pink argues that people are happy, engaged, productive, and creative when they are intrinsically motivated, as opposed to being motivated extrinsically by money, fear, punishment, or shame. He argues that…