IT is just IT

Andrew Harmel-Law interviewed by Maurice Driessen Earlier this month, while working on a proposal which turned out successful, I got the opportunity to have a discussion with Andrew Harmel-Law, around his personal experience with constructing a system based on a Microservices Architecture leveraging a evolutionary approach. It made sense to us to share this experience with all of you software engineers. Focal point of the discussion was how the non-functional characteristics of a Microservices Architecture contribute to the business continuity and agility of his client and helps software engineers to sustain a high quality and complex solution while improving the collaboration with the business. Could you tell me something about your client and how your collaboration with the client evolved? My client is large mail & parcel fulfillment provider in the UK. We build and run an array of their services for them. Initially started with eBussiness, the public facing websites an...

When I wanted to dive into and understand Microservices Architecture the following reading list was suggested to me: Life beyond Distributed Transactions:an Apostate’s Opinion by Pat Helland This paper explores and names some of the practical approaches used in the implementations of large-scale mission-critical applications in a world which rejects distributed transactions. It discusses the management of fine-grained pieces of application data which may be repartitioned over time as the application grows. It also discusses the design patterns used in sending messages between these repartitionable pieces of data. Migrating to Microservices by Adrian Cockcroft In this presentation Adrian Cockcroft discusses strategies, patterns and pathways to perform a gradual migration from monolithic applications towards cloud-based REST microservices. Idempotence Is Not a Medical Condition by Pat Helland An essential property for reliable systems. Distributed systems theory for the dis...