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 […]
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure–flutter of activity: Queue, Container Instances
Over the last few days, in this pre-Holiday season period, Oracle has released a number of interesting new services and updates to existing services. I plan on exploring them in more detail in the coming weeks. (note: the illustration is courtesy of StableDiffusion – using the prompt “a painting of […]
Unified Auditing not possible for Oracle Database XE (Express Edition)
I recently tried to get Unified Auditing going for Oracle Database XE. I could not really find instructions – not even through ChatGPT – and finally reached out to Gerald Venzl, the community champion at Oracle who is one for the key people behind Oracle Database XE. I learned from […]
GitHub Copilot reduces writing Java boilerplate to two simple comments
GitHub Copilot helped me write a Java application to process a CSV file. Not a hard task – though one that in Java always feels much harder than in Python or Node. This time round – because of Copilot – all I have to was write two simple instructions (and […]
Overhead of Service Mesh–measuring and comparing Istio, Linkerd, Kuma and Consul
A Service Mesh can provide many facilities regarding traffic management between microservices – from simple routing and load balancing, producing telemetry to applying complex routing logic and security policies. This layer of logic that is applied on top of what services are doing themselves is not free: additional latency is […]
Creating a PostgreSQL gitpod demo
In this blog I will demo how to create a GitPod workspace containing a PostgreSQL database and database tools in VSCode. Lucas Jellema recently created a GitPod workspace with an Oracle Database, and as we’re also increasingly interested in PostgreSQL I wanted to recreate this experiment but now with PostgreSQL. […]
Run your own instance of Backstage in 3 minutes
Backstage is the Developer Portal Platform that has come out of Spotify and now lives under the CNCF (Cloud Native Compute Foundation) umbrella where it is one of the most popular and active projects. Backstage provides a framework an starting point for what typically evolves into your highly customised developer […]
Running OpenTelemetry Demo in Gitpod Workspace–two click install
Recently the OpenTelemetry project launched a demo application that demonstrates many aspects of instrumentation, metrics and trace gathering, providing insight across multi-service, multi-technology application stacks and in general how to leverage OpenTelemetry. The application architecture for the demo stack looks like this: A front end web application – a web […]
Gitpod workspace for instant Dapr explorations
I have prepared a Gitpod wokspace definition that allows me to start a fresh development environment with the latest release of Dapr (dapr.io) installed as well as supporting containers that provide state store (Redis, MySQL) and Pub/Sub (Redis) capabilities. This environment is a perfect starting point for trying out Dapr, […]
Gitpod for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure development
Gidpod provides ephemeral development environments. Run a Gitpod workspace and get a clean environment with precisely those components that have been configured for the use case or context you need to work in. Everytime a workspace is initialized and everyone who does that, the environment will be exactly the same. […]
Quickly try out Kubernetes with two Pods–web app and database
Two colleagues wanted to try out Kubernetes and more specifically deployment of an application on Kubernetes that was not entirely trivial. One that consists of at least two Pods – one running a database and one running an application. A little internet browsing brought me to a single YAML file […]
I busted the 12 – The Myths of IoT
Internet of Things (IoT) is for many technology-enthusiast the single most important thing that has ever happened. The impact of this technology on our lives is growing close to mythical proportions. Working in this industry for years, made me encounter some of the myths and irrational expectations of IoT. Some […]
Which tools and technologies are new and exciting, proven, growing stale–report from Devoxx 2022
A conference such as Devoxx is a great opportunity to get inspired into trying out tools and technologies that may not or only be vaguely be known as they are mentioned or even demonstrated by presenters or discussed in the hallways of the movie theater where the conference is taking […]
Reflections from Devoxx 2022–on software engineering today
End of day two. So many topics already were presented, demonstrated, discussed, tried out to and by me. This article is just a very brief overview of what caught my attention. And what I will have to look into in more detail – or not in some cases. Containers and […]
One click free browser based Oracle Database environment with Gitpod
This article describes how you can run your very own Oracle Database from your browser using Gitpod. With a free account (50 hours Gitpod use per month), you can open this URL to launch a workspace that contains Oracle Database 21c XE along with VS Code, Oracle Developer Tools extension […]
Adding Podman to my VM with Minikube (part 2)
For a demo, I needed an environment with Minikube, using the Podman driver as an alternative container runtime to the Docker driver. In my previous article, I shared with you the steps I took, to get Podman in combination with Kubernetes (Minikube), working on my demo environment. [https://technology.amis.nl/recent/adding-podman-to-my-vm-with-minikube-part-1/] In this […]
Apache NiFi: Monitoring metrics and provenance events using Azure Log Analytics
There are several cases where you might want to use Azure Log Analytics to monitor your NiFi instances. An obvious one is when NiFi is running in Azure. Azure Log Analytics can also be used as single monitoring/alerting solution for multiple applications making operations easier by providing a single interface […]
Things Conference 2022 – Implementing IoT at Scale
I had the pleasure of visiting the The Things Conference 2022, the largest LoRaWAN event in the world. Organized by Things Industries in Amsterdam on September 22 and 24. The conference hosted about 1500 IoT professionals, 50 exhibitors, and 70 speakers. On Thursday and Friday, 22 – 23 September, I […]
Booting up–even quite senior – laptops with Ubuntu Linux OS using Rufus
The challenge was as follows: provide a handson workshop environment – consisting of nothing more than a browser connected to our office’s Wifi network – for visitors to the Open Day we organized at my company. However, all I had to work with was a bunch of really old laptops […]
First steps with Gitpod – great for try out, quick open source contributions and for workshops
Gitpod.io is a SaaS for software developers (that can also be used in self-hosted mode on Kubernetes). Gitpod makes workspaces available – typically based on a Git repository – with tools to develop and build software. A workspace is an ephemeral (not long lasting) Linux environment that I can access […]
Adding Podman to my VM with Minikube (part 1)
For a demo, I needed an environment with Minikube, using the Podman driver as an alternative container runtime to the Docker driver. 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 […]
Oracle Database 23c–new feature highlights (release February 2023?)
Based on the fascinating Twitter thread by Philipp Salvisberg covering the presentation by Gerald Venzl at DOAG 2022 I would like to mention a few of the features that apparently will be part of Oracle Database 23c – the new Long Term Support release (succeeding 19c) that has a beta […]
Oracle Cloud’s marching order: win developers’ hearts and minds
There are two public cloud. AWS and Azure. That is not actually the case – but that is how sometimes it may seem. A third cloud is frequently listed alongside the two main players. A cloud that has made serious efforts to be seen by developers and architects. By somehow […]
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 […]
Run "docker-compose" on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute using Podman
Running “docker compose” in a VM on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is perhaps not the ideal way to go – which probably would be OKE (Kubernetes) in order to benefit most from modern container infrastructure features and leverage the underlying VMs the most. However, sometimes falling back on what works and […]
Installing Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS, Visual Studio Code and Node.js on a virtual machine using Vagrant and Oracle VirtualBox
For a TypeScript training, I needed an environment with Visual Studio Code and Node.js (a JavaScript runtime). On my Windows laptop, I wanted to create an environment with Ubuntu as guest Operating System, Visual Studio Code and Node.js available within an Oracle VirtualBox appliance. In my previous article, I shared […]
Migrating Oracle Enterprise Edition database To Standard Edition using Transportable Tablespaces
Introduction Oracle database Standard Edition (SE) has the main features of a RDBMS database and cost significantly less than Oracle Enterprise Edition (EE). Migrating a database from Oracle Enterprise Edition to Standard Edition can be a consideration ifthe Enterprise Edition options or features are not used (or not required) in […]
Azure API Management: Integration with Standard Logic Apps
In January 2022 there was a blog published on the Microsoft Tech Community that demonstrates how to integrate Azure API Management with Logic Apps (Standard). As mentioned in that blog, the functionality to import workflows in Logic Apps (Standard) is not yet available in API Management, only Logic Apps running […]
Installing Ubuntu Desktop 22.04 LTS on a virtual machine using VirtualBox
For a TypeScript training, I needed an environment with Visual Studio Code and Node.js (a JavaScript runtime). On my Windows laptop, I wanted to create an environment with Ubuntu as guest Operating System, Visual Studio Code and Node.js available within an Oracle VirtualBox appliance. In this article, I will share […]
Delay in establishing RAC Database connections after upgrading from Oracle 11g.
After upgrading to Oracle 12c, 19c, database connections take a long time (10 sec or more), before the connections are established. The connection time was less than 0.5 sec in 11g. This is caused by a setting in the used Oracle Clusterware/Grid Infrastructure service names for the database. The AQ […]
Pseudo Change Timestamp–Finding recently changed table rows using Flashback Version Query to provide a surrogate last_changed column
My challenge: replicate changes from database A to database B, once per day. The tables involved are pretty big (100M records). I really would not want to process them all into database B. However, the tables do not have a LAST_DATE_MODIFIED column that has a timestamp that is updated with […]
Quick Start with initially free Low Code Front End Development using Retool against ElephantSQL PostgreSQL
Front end development can be an art. An almost pixel by pixel design, a careful crafting UX or even CX. And there is a time and place and technology set for that. And there is a range of front end applications that may not require or even justify that same […]
Quick start with free managed PostgreSQL database on ElephantSQL
This article shows you can quickly get started with a free, managed PostgreSQL database with a table full of country data (using ElephantSQL). ElephantSQL is a hosted, managed PostgreSQL service from the team that also provides CloudKarafka and several other nice services. It is a breeze to get going. The […]
Is RHCSA still relevant when you use the cloud?
Last week I passed for my RHCSA exam (EX200) [1]. While I was studying for the exam, I asked myself which parts of this exam are still relevant when you use Linux servers and Linux containers in the cloud and which parts are not. Assumptions In the cloud, we prefer: […]
Supabase for Persistence and Server to Client Push in Vanilla HTML/JavaScript web application–a step by step guide
Supabase provides a cloud based backend service to web applications. That means that any (static) web application can use Supabase for user authentication and data persistence. Supabase provides a server to client) push notification service and it has server side serverless functions that can for example handle web hooks (triggers […]
Steampipe–analyze data from cloud, file, platform, IaC using SQL queries
In our daily work we are dealing with data from many sources. Data in CSV files, from Cloud APIs, in mail servers, configuration files, Terraform plans, in logging systems, source code repositories and many more. Different formats, access methods, tools. And retrieving data from one such source can be challenging […]
Linux background process and redirecting the standard input, output and error stream
Often, I use a Linux shell script that executes several commands. Sometimes you don’t want to wait for a command to end and you want the next command to immediately run after the previous one is started. In my previous article I mentioned such a situation, with regard to preparing […]
Apache NiFi: Importing and exporting parameters
When you import a new process group or upgrade an existing one, missing parameters contexts and parameters will automatically be added. The new parameters will be filled with values from the environment where the process group was committed to the Registry (except sensitive parameter values). This is usually a development […]
Creating a minimal container image for a Go application
How hard can it be – to create the smallest possible container image to run a Go application? It is not hard to create a container image that contains an binary executable file – and that is what a Go application turns into during the build process. However, that does […]
Apache NiFi: Having fun with Jolt transformations
Jolt is a Java library which can be used to transform JSON to JSON. A Jolt transformation specification itself is also a JSON file. You can use it in products such as Apache NiFi and Apache Camel. In this blog post I’ll describe my first experiences with Jolt transformations. For […]