Posted in TWIL

TWIL: November 14, 2021

Last week I got to read a lot about several different topics. You’ll find stuff about Azure Serverless, API Gateway pattern, Policy-Based Access Control (PBAC) and a couple of Microsoft news. I hope you find them interesting.

DevOps

YAML (Azure Pipelines) Code Reviews
A really useful code review checklist for Azure Pipelines described in YAML. It includes a set of best practices around Pipeline Structure, YAML Structure, Permission Check & Security as well as Troubleshooting Tips.

Learn YAML in Y Minutes
YAML means YAML Ain’t Markup Language and it is a human friendly data serialization language for all programming languages. Chances are you’ve already crossed paths with YAML on Kubernetes, Azure Pipelines or some other solution that leverages it. If you’re interesting in understanding it, this is a good place to start.

Microservice Architectures

Spring boot com service discovery + especificação automática de API’s
How-to article by João Godinho in Portuguese explaining how to setup a Spring Boot solution that uses a Service Registry, Eureka Server in this case, to ensure automatic documentation of the APIs with Swagger v2. The Swagger UI is generated through the use of Springfox.

Azure Serverless

Integration with Azure Serverless
When looking at the cloud, we all know that there are different models, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, containers and serverless, each placing different levels of responsibility at the consumer. Of all these models, serverless is probably the closest to a pure cloud model there is.

Introducing Azure Container Apps: a serverless container service for running modern apps at scale
Azure Container Apps is built on the foundation of powerful open-source technology in the Kubernetes ecosystem . The open-source centric approach enables a path for teams to build microservices without having to overcome the concept and operational overhead of working with Kubernetes directly and enables continued application portability by leveraging open standards and APIs. Behind the scenes, every application runs on Azure Kubernetes Service, with Kubernetes Event Driven Autoscaling (KEDA), Distributed Application Runtime (Dapr), and Envoy deeply integrated in the hosting service.

API Gateway & API Management

Choosing the Right API Gateway Pattern for Effective API Delivery
As organizations have started to transition away from monolithic applications towards microservices‑based apps, they have also realized that APIs not only facilitate efficient digital communication, but can also be a source of new revenue. For example, Salesforce.com generates more than 50% of its annual revenue through its APIs, while Expedia.com depends on them for almost 90%.

What is API-led Connectivity?
API-led connectivity is a methodical way to connect data to applications through reusable and purposeful APIs. These APIs are developed to play a specific role – unlocking data from systems, composing data into processes, or delivering an experience.

5 integration patterns to debunk the myths about API-led connectivity
API-led connectivity is not strictly restricted to three layers — System API, Process API, and Experience API — but that this is just a starting point. The key to success is using the layers effectively and flexibly.

The API gateway pattern versus the Direct client-to-microservice communication
In a microservices architecture, the client apps usually need to consume functionality from more than one microservice. If that consumption is performed directly, the client needs to handle multiple calls to microservice endpoints. What happens when the application evolves and new microservices are introduced or existing microservices are updated?

API Management Design Patterns for Digital Transformation
How are you going to implement an efficient API management strategy? This will be the burning problem in most enterprises and I will be touching upon possible solution patterns to address this problem.

Policy-Based Access Control

OPAL – Open Policy Administration Layer
OPAL is an administration layer for Open Policy Agent (OPA), detecting changes to both policy and policy data in realtime and pushing live updates to your agents. OPAL brings open-policy up to the speed needed by live applications. As your application state changes (whether it’s via your APIs, DBs, git, S3 or 3rd-party SaaS services), OPAL will make sure your services are always in sync with the authorization data and policy they need (and only those they need).

Styra DAS (Declarative Authorization Service)
Built on open-source, and declarative by design, Styra Declarative Authorization Service gives you a turnkey OPA control plane to mitigate risk, reduce human error, and accelerate development.

Microsoft News

Azure Functions 4.0 and .NET 6 support are now generally available
The Azure Functions team is excited to announce the general availability (GA) of Azure Functions 4.0. This is the latest release of Azure Functions that supports: .NET 6, Node.js 14, Python 3.7-3.9, Java 8 & 11, PowerShell 7.0, and other languages and runtimes using custom handlers.

Visual Studio 2022 now available
I am really excited to announce that we’ve reached general availability for Visual Studio 2022 and .NET 6, both of which are now available for download. Visual Studio 2022 will help you go from idea to code faster than ever. Developer productivity and quality-of-life improvements are at the heart of Visual Studio 2022, and we’re excited for you to try it out. Simply put, Visual Studio 2022 will let you bring your ideas to life.

10 Big Microsoft Azure Announcements At Ignite Fall 2021
Expanded security features in Azure Active Directory, more ways to use Azure Arc to build applications in any environment and improved tools for Azure-related migrations and data analytics are among the upgrades Microsoft revealed last week during its Ignite virtual conference for fall 2021.

Cool Stuff

A Deep Dive Into Serverless UI With TypeScript
Serverless UI is simply a free, open-source command-line utility for quickly building and deploying serverless applications on the AWS platform. In this article, we will learn and cover everything needed on using Serverless UI to deploy our projects or serverless applications to cloud services providers.

3 reasons to use views instead of tables in Power BI!
In recent months, I was frequently asked if one should use tables or views when IMPORTING data in Power BI. I’ve intentionally marked word importing, as the main purpose of this article is to compare usage of views vs tables in Import mode.

Have an awesome week!

Photo by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash

andrevala