Hello, I want to write this
blog after looking over some class activities again and seeing any questions to
review, but something caught my attention. I read the word
“microservices” in some class-work exercises; I got interested and
looked it up again. I found two links that helped me understand What are
microservices? And examples from Amazon company.

What are microservices? 

Microservices (microservice architecture) – is an
architectural method that structures an application as a collection of services
that are

• Highly maintainable and testable
• Loosely linked 
• Individually deployable
• Organized around business capabilities
• Owned by a small team

The microservice architecture makes applications easier
to scale and faster to develop, enabling innovation and accelerating
time-to-market for new features to reduce complex applications. It even allows
an organization to evolve its technology stack.

The pattern language guide 

The microservice architecture isn’t perfect; It has
several problems. Moreover, when using this architecture, many issues must
address.

The microservice architecture pattern language is a set
of patterns for applying the microservice architecture. It has two goals:

• The pattern language allows whether microservices are a good place for application.
• The pattern language allows the microservice
  architecture favorably.

Characteristics of Microservices

• Autonomous – Each element set in a
  microservices architecture can be developed, deployed, operated, and scaled
  without affecting the functioning of other benefits. Services don’t need to
  share any code or implementation with other services. Any connection between
  individual components happens through APIs. 
• Specialized – Each service is designed
  for a collection of capabilities and focuses on solving a specific problem. 

Benefits of Microservices

• Agility – promote an organization of small and
  independent teams that take ownership of their services. Groups work in a small
  and well-understood context and are allowed to work independently and fast. It
  helps to shorten construction cycle times. It benefits significantly from the
  throughput of the organization.
• Flexible Scaling – Each service is to be
  independently scaled to meet the demand for its support application. It enables
  teams to support requirements, precisely measure the cost of a feature, and
  manage availability if a service experiences a spike in demand.
• Easy Deployment – Enable continuous combination
  and delivery, helps try out new ideas, and rolls back if something doesn’t work.
  The low cost of failure enables experimentation to update code and stimulates
  time-to-market for new features.
• Technological Freedom – It doesn’t follow a
  “one size fits all” plan. Teams have chosen the best tool to solve
  specific problems.
• Reusable Code – Dividing software into small
  modules, which enables teams to use functions for multiple purposes.
• Resilience – Service independence increases an
  application’s stand to failure. With microservices, applications handle
  complete service failure by discrediting functionality and not crashing the
  entire application.

From the blog Andrew Lam’s little blog by Andrew Lam and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello, I want to write this
blog after looking over some class activities again and seeing any questions to
review, but something caught my attention. I read the word
“microservices” in some class-work exercises; I got interested and
looked it up again. I found two links that helped me understand What are
microservices? And examples from Amazon company.

What are microservices? 

Microservices (microservice architecture) – is an
architectural method that structures an application as a collection of services
that are

• Highly maintainable and testable
• Loosely linked 
• Individually deployable
• Organized around business capabilities
• Owned by a small team

The microservice architecture makes applications easier
to scale and faster to develop, enabling innovation and accelerating
time-to-market for new features to reduce complex applications. It even allows
an organization to evolve its technology stack.

The pattern language guide 

The microservice architecture isn’t perfect; It has
several problems. Moreover, when using this architecture, many issues must
address.

The microservice architecture pattern language is a set
of patterns for applying the microservice architecture. It has two goals:

• The pattern language allows whether microservices are a good place for application.
• The pattern language allows the microservice
  architecture favorably.

Characteristics of Microservices

• Autonomous – Each element set in a
  microservices architecture can be developed, deployed, operated, and scaled
  without affecting the functioning of other benefits. Services don’t need to
  share any code or implementation with other services. Any connection between
  individual components happens through APIs. 
• Specialized – Each service is designed
  for a collection of capabilities and focuses on solving a specific problem. 

Benefits of Microservices

• Agility – promote an organization of small and
  independent teams that take ownership of their services. Groups work in a small
  and well-understood context and are allowed to work independently and fast. It
  helps to shorten construction cycle times. It benefits significantly from the
  throughput of the organization.
• Flexible Scaling – Each service is to be
  independently scaled to meet the demand for its support application. It enables
  teams to support requirements, precisely measure the cost of a feature, and
  manage availability if a service experiences a spike in demand.
• Easy Deployment – Enable continuous combination
  and delivery, helps try out new ideas, and rolls back if something doesn’t work.
  The low cost of failure enables experimentation to update code and stimulates
  time-to-market for new features.
• Technological Freedom – It doesn’t follow a
  “one size fits all” plan. Teams have chosen the best tool to solve
  specific problems.
• Reusable Code – Dividing software into small
  modules, which enables teams to use functions for multiple purposes.
• Resilience – Service independence increases an
  application’s stand to failure. With microservices, applications handle
  complete service failure by discrediting functionality and not crashing the
  entire application.

From the blog Andrew Lam’s little blog by Andrew Lam and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello, I want to write this
blog after looking over some class activities again and seeing any questions to
review, but something caught my attention. I read the word
“microservices” in some class-work exercises; I got interested and
looked it up again. I found two links that helped me understand What are
microservices? And examples from Amazon company.

What are microservices? 

Microservices (microservice architecture) – is an
architectural method that structures an application as a collection of services
that are

• Highly maintainable and testable
• Loosely linked 
• Individually deployable
• Organized around business capabilities
• Owned by a small team

The microservice architecture makes applications easier
to scale and faster to develop, enabling innovation and accelerating
time-to-market for new features to reduce complex applications. It even allows
an organization to evolve its technology stack.

The pattern language guide 

The microservice architecture isn’t perfect; It has
several problems. Moreover, when using this architecture, many issues must
address.

The microservice architecture pattern language is a set
of patterns for applying the microservice architecture. It has two goals:

• The pattern language allows whether microservices are a good place for application.
• The pattern language allows the microservice
  architecture favorably.

Characteristics of Microservices

• Autonomous – Each element set in a
  microservices architecture can be developed, deployed, operated, and scaled
  without affecting the functioning of other benefits. Services don’t need to
  share any code or implementation with other services. Any connection between
  individual components happens through APIs. 
• Specialized – Each service is designed
  for a collection of capabilities and focuses on solving a specific problem. 

Benefits of Microservices

• Agility – promote an organization of small and
  independent teams that take ownership of their services. Groups work in a small
  and well-understood context and are allowed to work independently and fast. It
  helps to shorten construction cycle times. It benefits significantly from the
  throughput of the organization.
• Flexible Scaling – Each service is to be
  independently scaled to meet the demand for its support application. It enables
  teams to support requirements, precisely measure the cost of a feature, and
  manage availability if a service experiences a spike in demand.
• Easy Deployment – Enable continuous combination
  and delivery, helps try out new ideas, and rolls back if something doesn’t work.
  The low cost of failure enables experimentation to update code and stimulates
  time-to-market for new features.
• Technological Freedom – It doesn’t follow a
  “one size fits all” plan. Teams have chosen the best tool to solve
  specific problems.
• Reusable Code – Dividing software into small
  modules, which enables teams to use functions for multiple purposes.
• Resilience – Service independence increases an
  application’s stand to failure. With microservices, applications handle
  complete service failure by discrediting functionality and not crashing the
  entire application.

From the blog Andrew Lam’s little blog by Andrew Lam and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello, I want to write this
blog after looking over some class activities again and seeing any questions to
review, but something caught my attention. I read the word
“microservices” in some class-work exercises; I got interested and
looked it up again. I found two links that helped me understand What are
microservices? And examples from Amazon company.

What are microservices? 

Microservices (microservice architecture) – is an
architectural method that structures an application as a collection of services
that are

• Highly maintainable and testable
• Loosely linked 
• Individually deployable
• Organized around business capabilities
• Owned by a small team

The microservice architecture makes applications easier
to scale and faster to develop, enabling innovation and accelerating
time-to-market for new features to reduce complex applications. It even allows
an organization to evolve its technology stack.

The pattern language guide 

The microservice architecture isn’t perfect; It has
several problems. Moreover, when using this architecture, many issues must
address.

The microservice architecture pattern language is a set
of patterns for applying the microservice architecture. It has two goals:

• The pattern language allows whether microservices are a good place for application.
• The pattern language allows the microservice
  architecture favorably.

Characteristics of Microservices

• Autonomous – Each element set in a
  microservices architecture can be developed, deployed, operated, and scaled
  without affecting the functioning of other benefits. Services don’t need to
  share any code or implementation with other services. Any connection between
  individual components happens through APIs. 
• Specialized – Each service is designed
  for a collection of capabilities and focuses on solving a specific problem. 

Benefits of Microservices

• Agility – promote an organization of small and
  independent teams that take ownership of their services. Groups work in a small
  and well-understood context and are allowed to work independently and fast. It
  helps to shorten construction cycle times. It benefits significantly from the
  throughput of the organization.
• Flexible Scaling – Each service is to be
  independently scaled to meet the demand for its support application. It enables
  teams to support requirements, precisely measure the cost of a feature, and
  manage availability if a service experiences a spike in demand.
• Easy Deployment – Enable continuous combination
  and delivery, helps try out new ideas, and rolls back if something doesn’t work.
  The low cost of failure enables experimentation to update code and stimulates
  time-to-market for new features.
• Technological Freedom – It doesn’t follow a
  “one size fits all” plan. Teams have chosen the best tool to solve
  specific problems.
• Reusable Code – Dividing software into small
  modules, which enables teams to use functions for multiple purposes.
• Resilience – Service independence increases an
  application’s stand to failure. With microservices, applications handle
  complete service failure by discrediting functionality and not crashing the
  entire application.

From the blog Andrew Lam’s little blog by Andrew Lam and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

In programming, we often make a lot of mistakes, some break the code, and some do not. The ones that do not tend to bring down the efficiency of our code and make it very difficult to work with. Some of these mistakes have to do with the way we write the code, and they tend to hint at a bigger problem in the code design. These mistakes are called design smells. I think Martin Fowler defines coding smells the best, he defines them as a “surface indication that usually corresponds to a deeper problem in the system.” Design smells come in all different ways, but they usually stem from developers not following best practices. The end result is that the code either becomes too bloated, too inefficient or breaks easily. Luckily, design smells are rather easy to spot once you know what they are. Some of the more common smells are:

Rigidity – Program breaks in many places when a single change is made to the code.

Immobility – The code contains parts that could be useful in other systems, but the effort and risk involved in separating those parts from the original system are too great.

Opacity – This smell occurs when the code is difficult to understand and follow.

Fragility – The code becomes pretty difficult to change. A simple change could cause a cascade of subsequent changes in dependent modules.

Viscosity –  When making changes to the code, it is easy to do the wrong thing, but hard to do the right thing.

Needless complexity –  There are elements in the code that are not useful. Having them in the code is simply not necessary and it makes the code more complex than it needs to be.

Needless repetitiveness –  There are too many repeating elements in the code that could be removed by using abstracted or refactoring the program.

These are things that we do not want in the code. In fact, they are considered technical debt. Technical debt is a term that describes the effects of mistakes or bad practices in code. As we program, we are going to make mistakes, errors, and sometimes not follow best practices. These shortcomings are things that we will have to revisit later today and spend time, resources, and effort spent on trying to fix and modify the code to make it work better. In this sense, it is similar to normal debt.  Once you know the smells, it’ll become a lot easier to find them in your code. If you do spot design smells, then it is best to try to remove and solve the underlying problem.

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/CodeSmell.html

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html

From the blog CS@Worcester – Fadi Akram by Fadi Akram and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

This week, as we have started covering REST APIs in class, I thought it would be good to learn a little more about them. While we haven’t finished going over it in class, there’s just something about REST that hasn’t clicked with me, so finding out a little more about what “REST” means, and how they are used would be useful to help me conceptualize the material. That being said, after looking through some blogs, I found a great post about REST APIs called “REST API: Key Concepts, Best Practices, and Benefits” off the AltexSoft blog.

This blog post establishes Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style for APIs that standardizes interfaces between clients and servers in order to create, receive, update, or delete resources. These 4 actions are referred to by the acronym CRUD. The API acts as a handler for requests from client to server and replies from the server back to the client. These are the basic interactions that REST APIs are built to do. The article then talks about what makes an API “RESTful”, and how the principles of the REST architecture influence API design. These principles, called constraints within REST, are client and server autonomy, having a uniform interface and layered architecture, the use of caching, being stateless, and having the ability to run code on demand. Most importantly though, is flexibility by prioritizing business needs. This means that any of the other aspects of REST can be changed or ignored if they conflict with the needs of the API’s owner. The final part of the article covers some examples of REST API being used, with services such as Trello, and then compares REST to other API architecture like SOAP and GraphQL, which have some advantages over REST but are far more situation-dependant.

I think that most of the constraints that REST puts on API development seem extremely sensible. Especially the fact that they are there more as guidelines than as hard rules. Not every service is going to have the same needs, so the ability to use a framework that is flexible to those needs seems extremely useful. In the article, the author talks about how very few people actually apply all of these RESTful constraints, especially things like Code on Demand, as they have concerns about the security implications of doing things like this, which I also think is sensible. The uniform interface constraint seems extremely important to me as well, having an API that can run on any client platform or application, and will always have a standardized way of communicating with the server just seems like proper design. And the standardization seems to be one of the main selling points of REST. This definitely gave me a much better understanding of what REST APIs are, and why people would want to use them. It seems like an extremely flexible tool for API development and I will likely use it over other API architectures if I’m ever in that situation.

Source: https://www.altexsoft.com/blog/rest-api-design/

From the blog CS@Worcester – Kurt Maiser's Coding Blog by kmaiser and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. Last week we talked about APIs in Activity 12 and I want to go more in depth about APIs and what a REST API is since I don’t really know what they are. API stands for Application Programming Interface and it is a set of definitions that allows two applications to talk to each other. Almost every application uses an API to communicate data from your device to a server. The server has its own APIs to receive that data and interpret it, and then send it back to your device. Then the application translates that data into a readable format for you. You do not have to know how they are implemented into your application, which can simplify the application development and save a lot of time. 

APIs can also give security by only allowing certain data through and not all the data. For example, when you buy an item on an online store, you tell the store what items you want to buy and the store tells you what you need to pay. No other information from either your device or the website’s databases is transferred over. What I find interesting about APIs is how they work in video games. There can be multiple APIs in a game that each do something different, such as managing a game’s sound, rendering, and graphics, while others manage AI tasks such as path-finding. Pokemon is one of the most popular video game series out there and there is an API called “Poke API” that has every single Pokemon listing with moves, types, and weaknesses as well as every item in the games. A Pokemon website can use that API to easily get the latest updated information about Pokemon and the games.

REST API or RESTful API stands for Representational State Transfer API. It usually takes advantage of HTTP when used for Web APIs. This means that developers do not need to install libraries or additional software in order to take advantage of a REST API design. However, not all APIs can be REST APIs. In order for an API to be RESTful, it has to follow certain criteria. The client and the server should be separate from each other and allowed to evolve individually and independently, meaning making changes to the database won’t affect the clients. Stateless client-server communication, meaning no client information is stored between get requests and each request is separate and unconnected. Cacheable data that streamlines client-server interactions. A uniform interface which lets the client talk to the server in a single language, standardized means of communicating between the client and the server. A layered system that organizes each type of server. And lastly, Code-on-demand, which is the ability to send executable code from the server to the client when requested. All of these define what REST APIs do.

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/api/what-is-a-rest-api

From the blog Comfy Blog by and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. Last week we talked about APIs in Activity 12 and I want to go more in depth about APIs and what a REST API is since I don’t really know what they are. API stands for Application Programming Interface and it is a set of definitions that allows two applications to talk to each other. Almost every application uses an API to communicate data from your device to a server. The server has its own APIs to receive that data and interpret it, and then send it back to your device. Then the application translates that data into a readable format for you. You do not have to know how they are implemented into your application, which can simplify the application development and save a lot of time. 

APIs can also give security by only allowing certain data through and not all the data. For example, when you buy an item on an online store, you tell the store what items you want to buy and the store tells you what you need to pay. No other information from either your device or the website’s databases is transferred over. What I find interesting about APIs is how they work in video games. There can be multiple APIs in a game that each do something different, such as managing a game’s sound, rendering, and graphics, while others manage AI tasks such as path-finding. Pokemon is one of the most popular video game series out there and there is an API called “Poke API” that has every single Pokemon listing with moves, types, and weaknesses as well as every item in the games. A Pokemon website can use that API to easily get the latest updated information about Pokemon and the games.

REST API or RESTful API stands for Representational State Transfer API. It usually takes advantage of HTTP when used for Web APIs. This means that developers do not need to install libraries or additional software in order to take advantage of a REST API design. However, not all APIs can be REST APIs. In order for an API to be RESTful, it has to follow certain criteria. The client and the server should be separate from each other and allowed to evolve individually and independently, meaning making changes to the database won’t affect the clients. Stateless client-server communication, meaning no client information is stored between get requests and each request is separate and unconnected. Cacheable data that streamlines client-server interactions. A uniform interface which lets the client talk to the server in a single language, standardized means of communicating between the client and the server. A layered system that organizes each type of server. And lastly, Code-on-demand, which is the ability to send executable code from the server to the client when requested. All of these define what REST APIs do.

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/api/what-is-a-rest-api

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. Last week we talked about APIs in Activity 12 and I want to go more in depth about APIs and what a REST API is since I don’t really know what they are. API stands for Application Programming Interface and it is a set of definitions that allows two applications to talk to each other. Almost every application uses an API to communicate data from your device to a server. The server has its own APIs to receive that data and interpret it, and then send it back to your device. Then the application translates that data into a readable format for you. You do not have to know how they are implemented into your application, which can simplify the application development and save a lot of time. 

APIs can also give security by only allowing certain data through and not all the data. For example, when you buy an item on an online store, you tell the store what items you want to buy and the store tells you what you need to pay. No other information from either your device or the website’s databases is transferred over. What I find interesting about APIs is how they work in video games. There can be multiple APIs in a game that each do something different, such as managing a game’s sound, rendering, and graphics, while others manage AI tasks such as path-finding. Pokemon is one of the most popular video game series out there and there is an API called “Poke API” that has every single Pokemon listing with moves, types, and weaknesses as well as every item in the games. A Pokemon website can use that API to easily get the latest updated information about Pokemon and the games.

REST API or RESTful API stands for Representational State Transfer API. It usually takes advantage of HTTP when used for Web APIs. This means that developers do not need to install libraries or additional software in order to take advantage of a REST API design. However, not all APIs can be REST APIs. In order for an API to be RESTful, it has to follow certain criteria. The client and the server should be separate from each other and allowed to evolve individually and independently, meaning making changes to the database won’t affect the clients. Stateless client-server communication, meaning no client information is stored between get requests and each request is separate and unconnected. Cacheable data that streamlines client-server interactions. A uniform interface which lets the client talk to the server in a single language, standardized means of communicating between the client and the server. A layered system that organizes each type of server. And lastly, Code-on-demand, which is the ability to send executable code from the server to the client when requested. All of these define what REST APIs do.

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/api/what-is-a-rest-api

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog. Last week we talked about APIs in Activity 12 and I want to go more in depth about APIs and what a REST API is since I don’t really know what they are. API stands for Application Programming Interface and it is a set of definitions that allows two applications to talk to each other. Almost every application uses an API to communicate data from your device to a server. The server has its own APIs to receive that data and interpret it, and then send it back to your device. Then the application translates that data into a readable format for you. You do not have to know how they are implemented into your application, which can simplify the application development and save a lot of time. 

APIs can also give security by only allowing certain data through and not all the data. For example, when you buy an item on an online store, you tell the store what items you want to buy and the store tells you what you need to pay. No other information from either your device or the website’s databases is transferred over. What I find interesting about APIs is how they work in video games. There can be multiple APIs in a game that each do something different, such as managing a game’s sound, rendering, and graphics, while others manage AI tasks such as path-finding. Pokemon is one of the most popular video game series out there and there is an API called “Poke API” that has every single Pokemon listing with moves, types, and weaknesses as well as every item in the games. A Pokemon website can use that API to easily get the latest updated information about Pokemon and the games.

REST API or RESTful API stands for Representational State Transfer API. It usually takes advantage of HTTP when used for Web APIs. This means that developers do not need to install libraries or additional software in order to take advantage of a REST API design. However, not all APIs can be REST APIs. In order for an API to be RESTful, it has to follow certain criteria. The client and the server should be separate from each other and allowed to evolve individually and independently, meaning making changes to the database won’t affect the clients. Stateless client-server communication, meaning no client information is stored between get requests and each request is separate and unconnected. Cacheable data that streamlines client-server interactions. A uniform interface which lets the client talk to the server in a single language, standardized means of communicating between the client and the server. A layered system that organizes each type of server. And lastly, Code-on-demand, which is the ability to send executable code from the server to the client when requested. All of these define what REST APIs do.

https://www.redhat.com/en/topics/api/what-is-a-rest-api

From the blog Comfy Blog by Angus Cheng and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.