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 […]
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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
How to scale and smarten up a real-life energy grid with Azure IoT
In this episode of the IoT Show, we discuss the IoT smart grid project that AMIS Conclusion has created for a customer in The Netherlands. We talk about a real-life large-scale energy grid and all the challenges we face implementing this on an Enterprise scale. Robbrecht van Amerongen will talk […]
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 […]
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 […]
How to open IDCS Console from OCI– Finding the entry to Identity Cloud Service
I have just spent way too much time on finding the way to the Oracle IDCS console from within my OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) console. I was reading a bunch of interesting articles on using IDCS to protect access to OCI Functions and I was trying to follow along. However, […]
Simple queries against Oracle Cloud NoSQL Database
I have been struggling in my first simple steps with querying data in a NoSQL Database table on Oracle Cloud. Creating the table is easy enough – either in the console or through Terraform or the CLI. However, the data that my Node application creates in the table seemed very […]
Cleaning Out a Compartment on Oracle Cloud using Terraform provider
The situation: a Compartment on OCI should be removed. Or at least all its resources should be purged. Or at least most of the resources should be removed. The challenge: there is no “purge compartment” available that will delete the resources in the compartment. Removing each resource one by one […]
Devoxx United Kingdom 2021, I am We are
At the beginning of this November, I attended the Devoxx United Kingdom 2021 event, remotely. In this article I gathered some practical information about the event, and the sessions that were held. Perhaps this gives you more insight in what you can expect from such an event and it may […]
OCI DevOps–Build Pipelines and Code Repositories for CI
This article introduces Build Pipelines and Code Repositories in OCI DevOps (released on October 26th 2021) – complementing the Artifact Registry and Deployment Pipelines that were first launched in July of 2021 and that I discussed in this article. Build [ing software] is an apparently clear indication of a specific […]
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 […]
Product selection done quickly
Your customer has a specific challenge and wants to have it solved by means of software. They ask you as a software/solution architect to advise them on this topic and they want to be able to choose a solution based on your advise by the end of next week (we’re […]
Scaling [down] the Mountain of Debt – Four dimensions of IT Debt
![Scaling [down] the Mountain of Debt – Four dimensions of IT Debt](https://technology.amis.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/image.png)
WYSIWYG may not be true for all IT systems. What you see may be more than what you actually get. As a Product Owner, you have to be very careful to not deceive yourself. The latest iteration of your product may be shiny and new – but all may not […]
Architecture in an agile world
This year I had to work with a colleague for multiple internal poc’s that we could use to show customers. Together we started thinking about the approach and where to start. We planned to approach it in a Scrum way, but soon landed upon the question where architecture would fit […]
AWS Config automated remediation
Introduction It is possible in AWS to check if your environment is compliant to your minimum standards. It is also possible to automatically change the environment to make it compliant again. Maybe not in a way that was designed by the developer – but compliant anyhow. Let me give an […]
“You have to give a little… scripting for 12c+”
or Publishing a cleanup script for Oracle 12c+ At the moment I’m just for fun collecting Linux scripts from my direct colleagues. And while I was busy to think up a wiki page for internal use, for a moment I felt like Uncle Scrooge, gathering riches from other minds. Which, […]
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 […]
Stop DELETE_IN_PROGRESS when custom resources fail in AWS CloudFormation
Script to stop the execution of CloudFormation when you made a small error in a custom resource (Lambda function).
Preparation for migrating data to Oracle Virtual Private Database
preparation for migrating data to Oracle Virtual Private Database Introduction Recently I was part of a team involved in the preparation of migration data belonging to multiple business units into a single Oracle 19c database with Virtual Private Database (VPD). The VPD solution is used for the virtual separation […]
Play environment for WebGoat, WebWolf and Juice Shop
In this blog post, I will show how you can install the OWASP training tools WebGoat, WebWolf and JuiceShop on your local laptop using Vagrant.
How to use single sign on between multiple OCI environments
Since we provide support for several clients in OCI, we regularly need to login into different OCI-tenancies. How nice would it be to have Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality between these different customer environments. Just 1 credential for all environments, granting and revoking access a lot easier. Also no need to […]
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 […]
Delete play-resources from Azure using runbooks
Learning a new cloud can be frighting: do I configure this right? And, when I click here, don’t I end up with a huge bill at the end of the month? In general, these fears can be solved quite easily: when you follow along with a training, the trainer will […]
Executing JavaScript from PL/SQL in Oracle Database 21c with Multi Language Engine
Oracle Database Release 7 – end of 1993 – introduced PL/SQL as language for Stored Procedures, Functions and Triggers. This was just before I joined Oracle Corporation, in May 1994. I have made extensive use of PL/SQL. With Oracle 8i we saw the advent of the Embedded JVM that made […]