Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
This is the first in a series about core data structures and algorithms.
Many explanations of data structures focus on the implementation — and that is very important — but I’ve always found some context makes it so much easier to learn. And the trade-offs between various data structures is one of the most interesting contexts you can study.
I’ve been programming for many years, and have spent most of the last few years managing development teams. I’ve written plenty of closed source software, and for a time made my living writing open source software too.
One thing stands out: a shared code base does not a software team make.
Continue reading “A shared code base does not a software team make”
rqlite
is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v4.0.1 is now out. This release includes some minor bug fixes.
You can download the release from GitHub.
Thanks to Justin Morant there is now a new JavaScript client library for rqlite, the lightweight, distributed, relational database.
This library allows you to build both in-browser and node.js applications, that access rqlite. You can check it out on GitHub.
A Google Group for rqlite discussions has been created. This should be a faster way to learn more about the uses, design, and implementation of rqlite.
Check it out here.
A new version of Ekanite, the syslog server with built-in search, has been released. v1.2.3 includes a fix to the diagnostic output.
You can download v1.2.3 from the GitHub releases page.
I’ve started experimenting with Go and gRPC. To that end I’ve written a simple service that accepts connections from gRPC clients, allowing those clients to send queries to PostgreSQL.
So far it’s been pretty straightforward. You can check out the code on GitHub.
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. It’s been over a year since the last major release and v4.0.0 is now available.
Continue reading “rqlite now available with node-to-node encryption”
A new version of Ekanite, the syslog server with built-in search, has been released. v1.2.1 includes a very important bug fix, for an issue that affected TCP operation.
You can download v1.2.1 from the GitHub releases page.
Last night Percolate hosted the San Francisco ReactJS Meetup.
I acted as host, and we had great speakers and presentations.
Continue reading “San Francisco ReactJS Meetup at Percolate”
Slack: Where work happens
Something is happening at companies that use Slack. Slack, the company, may claim it’s work, but it’s less and less productive work, and it’s having a destructive effect upon my own field of software development.
I like really Slack, Flowdock, Hipchat and their ilk — I’ve written about it before. I couldn’t do my job without them. But it’s time to confront the damage these tools are causing.
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.14.0 is now out. This release is the first built with Go 1.8.
You can download the release from GitHub.
I finally got around to creating the first Docker image for rqlite, the lightweight distributed, relational database built on SQLite.
It was pretty straightforward, once I took a look at how Vault and InfluxDB create their respective images. The image size is rather large at 97MB, but that can probably be improved with a base image other than Ubuntu.
The new Analytics system, built by my team at Percolate, allows our end-users to program their own custom calculations, offering them the ability to precisely customize the product for their needs.
At the center of that feature is a Pratt Parser. Percolate recently presented on this topic at the San Francisco Python Meetup. You can find the slides here, and code here.
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.13.0 is now out. This release includes minor enhancements and a couple of bug fixes.
You can download the release from GitHub.
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.12.1 has been released. This release includes integration with a new Discovery Service, allowing nodes to automatically connect and form a cluster. This can be very convenient, allowing clusters to be dynamically created.
You can download the release from GitHub.
In this post I describe how I built a serverless cluster discovery service for rqlite, the distributed relational database built on SQLite.
Built using the AWS API Gateway service, AWS Lambda, and DynamoDB, it means rqlite nodes no longer need to be passed the network address of an existing node in a cluster, and can instead connect automatically.
Continue reading “Building a cluster discovery service with AWS Lambda and DynamoDB”
Today sees the launch of Analytics 2.0 on the Percolate platform. After 12 months of hard work by my team, I am very proud of the new platform.
1 year ago the San Francisco team was tasked with rebuilding the Analytics system at Percolate. In place of our legacy MySQL-based system, we now have a brand new architecture, based on Apache Kafka and Elasticsearch. It’s more responsive, more flexible, and offers much richer functionality.
You can learn all about the new system on the Percolate blog.
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.10.0 has been released. This release includes some minor configuration control and logging enhancements.
You can download the release from GitHub.
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.9.2 is now out. This release includes a couple of significant bug fixes.
You can download the release from GitHub.
It’s 2017, and that means I’ve been in various engineering management and technical lead roles for about 6 years. That’s long enough to learn something about management, but short enough to remember clearly all the mistakes I made early on.
Continue reading “What new development managers should know”
