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”
Philip O'Toole
Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
Philip O'Toole
Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
Why Slack isn’t working
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 affect 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 v3.14.0 released
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.
rqlite now available as a Docker image
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.
Percolate at the San Francisco Python Meetup
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 v3.13.0 released
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 v3.12.1 now with Discovery Service for easier clustering
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.
Building a cluster discovery service with AWS Lambda and DynamoDB
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”
Analytics 2.0 goes live at Percolate
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 v3.10.0 released
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 v3.9.2 released
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.
What new development managers should know
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”
Ekanite 1.2.0 released
A new version of Ekanite, the syslog server with built-in search, has been released. v1.2.0 includes some minor fixes and improvements.
You can download v1.2.0 from the GitHub releases page.
Building a snap for rqlite
I’ve started experimenting with one of the newest packaging systems — Canonical’s Snap format.
I learned about Snap from Mark Shuttleworth when he let me know that he had created a rqlite Snap. It seems pretty clean and straightforward so far — I’ve already started working on my first snap for rqlite, and plan to publish a version as a Ubuntu app.
rqlite v3.8.0 released
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.8.0 is now out. This release includes some minor enhancements and bug fixes.
You can download the release from GitHub.
Stop asking "how much data do you have?"
In every field there is a question that, while it sounds interesting, betrays a naiveté and lack of sophistication.
In my field — SaaS and data platforms — it’s how much data do you have?
Some of my favourite programming books
I was recently asked by some colleagues about my favourite books on programming. And not just books on coding, but on improving their understanding of successful teams.
Load SQLite dump files into rqlite v3.7.0
rqlite is a lightweight distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. With release v3.7.0 you can load SQLite dump files directly into rqlite. This makes restoring from a backup, or migrating an existing SQLite database to rqlite much easier.
You can download the release from GitHub.
Elasticsearch Meetup at Percolate
Last night Percolate hosted the San Francisco Elasticsearch Meetup.
I acted as host, and it was a great night, with excellent speakers and presentations.
Ekanite at the San Francisco Go Meetup
I gave a presentation on Ekanite — the syslog server with built-in search — tonight at the San Francisco Go Meetup. It was an enjoyable evening, and I had a chance to discuss why I built Ekanite, how it works, and where it might go in the future.
rqlite v3.6.0 released
rqlite is an open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.6.0 is out. With this release a new node can now join an existing cluster though any node of that cluster, not just through the leader node.
You can download the release from GitHub.
rqlite now supported on Microsoft Windows
rqlite is a lightweight, open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. Thanks to the power of the Go tool chain, it is compatible with Microsoft Windows without any extra effort.
To ensure that it remains compatible with Windows, I have enabled CI for Windows using AppVeyor. After some help from the open-source community, it’s up and running now.
InfluxDB 1.0 released
My old colleagues at InfluxData have released InfluxDB 1.0. Congratulations to them all on this great milestone.
Being involved with the development of InfluxDB was a great experience, and I’m sure the database will go from strength to strength.
rqlite v3.5.0 released
rqlite is an open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.5.0 is out. This release supports important control of foreign key constraints, in the underlying SQLite database.
You can download the release from GitHub.
rqlite v3.4.1released
rqlite is an open-source distributed relational database, with SQLite as its storage engine. v3.4.1 is out. This release includes some minor fixes as well as source code improvements (linting).
You can download the release from GitHub.