Oracle Cloud Infrastructure DevOps is a service I have written about on several occasions. The OCI DevOps service provides an Artifact Repository, Git Code repositories, Build Pipelines and Deployment Pipelines that know how to interact with the runtime environments OKE, Oracle Functions and Compute VM. The news flash is that […]
Continuous Delivery
Quickest way to run a container on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure: container instances
Container Instances on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are VM based environments that can be leveraged as “serverless” container runtimes. Once a container instance has been defined – which is a very simple, rapid procedure – we can specify the container images (OCI – open container initiative – compliant) for which containers […]
Build JHipster application for and Run on Docker or Podman
For the Open Day we organize shortly for our family, friends, neighbours and other interested parties, my colleagues create a custom web application to support our QR Scavenger Hunt through the offices and surrounding premises. This (progressive) web application is created using JHipster – leveraging Java, Angular, Spring, PostgreSQL and […]
Apache NiFi: Automating tasks using NiPyAPI
Apache NiFi has a powerful web-based interface which provides a seamless experience between design, control, feedback, and monitoring. Sometimes however, you want to automate tasks instead of doing them manually using the UI. This does not only allow you to perform the tasks a lot quicker but it also helps […]
Apache NiFi: Avoid these common pitfalls
Apache NiFi is an easy to use, powerful, and reliable system to process and distribute data. It has a powerful UI which can be used for both development and operations. In addition, the NiFi Registry is available to make promoting software from one environment to the next, easy. In order […]
Adding Grafana to my VM with Minikube and Elasticsearch
For a demo, I needed an environment with Grafana. Lucky for me, I had the configuration for such an environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox. In the past, I already set up such a demo environment, available within an Oracle VirtualBox appliance, as I described in a series of articles. […]
Vagrant and Hyper-V: Don’t do it!
I’ve used Vagrant since 2015 in combination with Virtualbox for creating development machines. Recently however I’m experiencing more issues with Virtualbox. For example CPUs getting stuck when assigning multiple CPUs to a VM and issues with auto adjusting the guest resolution when resizing the VM window. These annoyances drove me […]
Trouble shooting while upgrading a VM with Minikube, Elasticsearch and Kibana (using the –vm-driver=none option) –on my Windows laptop using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox
For a demo, I needed an environment including Elasticsearch and Kibana (Elastic Stack). Lucky for me, I had the configuration for such an environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox. In the past, I already set up such a demo environment, available within an Oracle VirtualBox appliance, as I described in […]
Apache Kafka, setting up a demo environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox (part 2)
I wanted to set up a demo environment with Apache Kafka (an open-source distributed event streaming platform) and an Oracle Database, all within containers. For my purpose I opted for Oracle Database XE. [https://kafka.apache.org/] In a series of articles, I will take you with me on my path to set […]
Apache Kafka, setting up a demo environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox (part 1)
I wanted to set up a demo environment with Apache Kafka (an open-source distributed event streaming platform) and an Oracle Database, all within containers. For my purpose I opted for Oracle Database XE. [https://kafka.apache.org/] In my previous article, I described the steps I took, to set up a demo environment […]
Oracle Database 21c XE, setting up a demo environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox (part 4)
I wanted to set up a demo environment with Apache Kafka (an open-source distributed event streaming platform) and an Oracle Database, all within containers. For my purpose I opted for Oracle Database XE. [https://kafka.apache.org/] As I did before, on my Windows laptop, I wanted to use a demo environment within […]
Oracle Database 21c XE, setting up a demo environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox (part 3)
I wanted to set up a demo environment with Apache Kafka (an open-source distributed event streaming platform) and an Oracle Database, all within containers. For my purpose I opted for Oracle Database XE. [https://kafka.apache.org/] As I did before, on my Windows laptop, I wanted to use a demo environment within […]
Oracle Database 21c XE, setting up a demo environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox (part 2)
I wanted to set up a demo environment with Apache Kafka (an open-source distributed event streaming platform) and an Oracle Database, all within containers. For my purpose I opted for Oracle Database XE. [https://kafka.apache.org/] As I did before, on my Windows laptop, I wanted to use a demo environment within […]
Creating, Building and Invoking a Function on OCI with Terraform
Automation through infrastructure as code is the name of the game. And I am a player in that game. In the last few weeks I have spent a lot of time on creating resources on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Through the console, using Terraform and the Resource Manager and Stacks, with […]
OCI DevOps Build Pipeline for Functions
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers the Functions service, a FaaS offering with serverless functions, based on container images built with the Project Fn FDK. In a previous article, I introduced the OCI DevOps Deployment Pipeline for Functions – a free service on OCI that automated the deployment of a Function from […]
OCI DevOps Deployment Pipeline for Functions–automation on Oracle Cloud
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has a free DevOps cloud service that includes build and deploy pipelines in addition to source code and artifact repositories. I have written about OCI DevOps Deployment Pipelines and its Build Pipelines in earlier articles. In this article, I will show you a deployment pipeline on OCI […]
Oracle Database 21c XE, setting up a demo environment using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox (part 1)
I wanted to set up a demo environment with Apache Kafka (an open-source distributed event streaming platform) and an Oracle Database, all within containers. For my purpose I opted for Oracle Database XE. [https://kafka.apache.org/] As I did before, on my Windows laptop, I wanted to use a demo environment within […]
OCI DevOps–Free Automated Cloud Native Application Deployment to Oracle Cloud
Deployment is a term used frequently and often casually in software engineering. A term that for a long time was a bit cryptic to me. What exactly is deployment and what steps does it entail? Why is it apparently so hard? What help do deployment tools offer? And what is […]
Continuous Generation and Publication of Docstring Documentation on Azure – using Sphinx, Pydoc, Storage Account and App Service
In this blog I will explain how to generate static HTML pages from your projects Pydoc (docstring) comments with Sphinx. Then we are going to host it in an Azure Web App so that everyone in your team is able to access it. Because we use a Storage Mount, when […]
Using a Managed Identity with Azure Automation Accounts
Introduction I think that every production environment in Azure uses Automation Accounts for f.e. scheduled tasks. Up to recently, you were forced to use the Run As user to do so. This solution has, however, two drawbacks. The first one is that this Run As user has way too many […]
SonarCloud: OWASP Dependency-Check reports
SonarCloud is a hosted SonarQube SaaS solution which helps you with code quality management. It is free to use for open source projects. You cannot install 3rd party plugins in SonarCloud however. This puts some limitations on the kind of data you can put in SonarCloud. For Java this is […]
GitHub Actions and SonarCloud
GitHub Actions allow you to do most CI/CD tasks for free, directly from your GitHub repository. One of the challenges however is that there is no build-in facility like for example SonarQube to manage code quality. Luckily, SonarSource provides SonarCloud; a SonarQube SaaS offering which is free for public projects! […]
GitHub Actions: A first impression
I’m a regular user of GitHub. Recently I discovered GitHub also has a build-in CI/CD workflow solution called GitHub Actions. Curious about how this would work I decided to try it out. I had previously build a Jenkins Pipeline to perform several static and dynamic application security tests on a Java project […]
OWASP ZAP: A quick introduction to a versatile open source DAST tool
OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is an open source dynamic application security testing (DAST) tool. It is available here and has a website with documentation here. I recently encountered it when looking for open source security test tools to embed in a CI/CD pipeline (here). I was surprised by how versatile this tool […]
How to build [a CI/CD pipeline for] an Oracle Database application–kicking off a six part series
Build is an overloaded term in the world of software engineering. Building software used to be mainly a fancy way of saying “programming”. Now after the construction of the code, the actual build process is kicked off, that takes the work from the individual programmer and turns it into something […]
How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (1)
What’s in a name? A title is important and I hope that it describes well what I do want to share with you in this series of articles. It is not so much about how to use the back-end part (Oracle Database) or the front-end (Oracle APEX, Java, Node, React […]
Java Security: Open Source tools for use in CI/CD pipelines
It is often expected of a DevOps team to also take security into consideration when delivering software. Often however, this does not get the attention it deserves. In this blog post I’ll describe some easy to use, CI/CD pipeline friendly, open source tools you can use to perform several checks […]
How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (6)
Last time in “How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (5)”, I told you about Git, Subversion, Maven and Flyway. In this final article, I will discuss the following tools & methods: Oracle SQL Developer, utPLSQL, SonarQube, Perl, Ant and DevOps. Oracle […]
How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (5)
Last time in “How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (4)”, I told you about the Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. This time I will discuss the following tools: Git, Subversion, Maven and Flyway. Flyway The first tool I would like to […]
How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (4)
Last time in “How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (3)”, I told you about the Oracle Database and Oracle APEX. This time I will discuss Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler A book I can recommend is Oracle […]
How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (3)
Last time in “How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (2)”, I did show you the database structure. This time I will elaborate on the base tools, the Oracle Database and Oracle APEX. Oracle Database How to use it? I can tell […]
How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (2)
Last time in “How to build an Oracle Database application (that supports APEX, Java, React or any other front-end) (1)”, I gave you an introduction. This time I will elaborate on the database structure. Project folder layout The following top level directories may exist for every database application project: Directory Description […]
Jenkins Pipeline: SonarQube and the OWASP Dependency-Check
The OWASP Foundation plays an important role in helping to improve security of software worldwide. They have created a popular and well-known awareness document called the ‘OWASP Top 10‘. This document lists the following risk: using components with known vulnerabilities. Software nowadays can be quite complex consisting of many direct and […]
Get going with automated CI/CD on OCI in Visual Builder Studio
The Oracle Developer Cloud Service was probably the very first service on Oracle Cloud, as early as 2015 if I remember correctly. This service has been repositioned and relabeled as Visual Builder Studio. This service supports agile project management, source code control, artifact management, automated builds, software quality checks, CI/CD […]
Deploy A Docker Container To AWS With Azure Pipelines
Introduction In response to a demo I gave about deploying a docker container to the Azure platform, I received some questions about deploying a docker container to the AWS platform. I wrote a guide on how to deploy a docker container with Azure Pipelines here. In my opinion is Azure […]
Surprisingly easy: Anchore Engine for container vulnerability scanning in a Jenkins pipeline running on Kubernetes
Anchore Engine is a popular open source tool for container image inspection and vulnerability scanning. It is easily integrated in a Kubernetes environment as an admission controller or in a Jenkins build pipeline using a plugin. A while ago I took a look at Anchore Engine and created a small introductory presentation and Katacoda scenario for […]
Jenkins: Building Java and deploying to Kubernetes
Kubernetes is a popular platform to run and manage containerized applications. A CI/CD solution is often needed but not always provided. You might need to set this up for yourself. In this blog post I’ll provide a minimal end-to-end solution for Java applications. This starts with a commit in source […]
Quarkus – Supersonic Subatomic Java, trying out some Quarkus code guides (part2)
In this article, you can read more about a Quarkus code guide I tried out, related to the following topic: Packaging the native executable in a container In a next article, you can read more about another Quarkus code guide I tried out, related to the following topic: The ability […]
OpenEBS: cStor storage engine on KVM
OpenEBS provides a Kubernetes native distributed storage solution which is friendly on developers and administrators. It is completely open source and part of the CNCF. Previously I wrote about installing and using OpenEBS, Jiva storage engine, on the Charmed Kubernetes distribution of Canonical. The Jiva storage class uses storage inside managed […]
Production-like Kubernetes on your laptop. Kubespray on KVM
There are various options to install a production-like Kubernetes distribution on your laptop. Previously I tried out using the Canonical stack (Juju, MAAS, Charmed Kubernetes) for this. This worked nicely but it gave me the feeling that it was a bit Canonical specific and it felt a bit heavy on resources at […]