To Laura

For my daughter, who will always be the best part of my story.

Connecting webMethods JDBC Adapter to an IBM Informix Database

Running IBM Informix in Docker and Connecting webMethods JDBC Adapter Overview This article documents, end‑to‑end, the setup of IBM Informix Developer Edition running in a Docker container and its successful integration with Software AG webMethods Integration Server using the JDBC Adapter. The goal is to provide a practical, real‑world guide covering: Informix installation via Docker Linux host preparation and security pitfalls Network and port exposure JDBC driver selection and placement webMethods JDBC Adapter configuration Common errors and how they were resolved This guide is based on a real troubleshooting session and reflects the issues you are most likely to encounter in enterprise Linux environments. ...

January 4, 2026 · 4 min · 694 words · me

27 Development Rules for High-Performance webMethods Solutions

27 Development Rules for High-Performance webMethods Solutions Integration platforms rarely fail because of a single architectural mistake. Performance degradation is usually the cumulative effect of many small design and development decisions, repeated thousands or millions of times per day. The following 27 development rules were established based on real-world analysis of webMethods Integration Server solutions, production incidents, GC investigations, and performance tuning exercises. They are intended to be used as development norms, not optional tips. ...

October 12, 2025 · 5 min · 1060 words · me

Understanding and Tuning Garbage Collection in Java (G1GC)

Understanding and Tuning Garbage Collection in Java (G1GC) A practical, production-minded guide (with gc.log field reference and tuning options) Garbage Collection (GC) is one of the most misunderstood topics in the Java ecosystem. It is frequently blamed for latency spikes, slow services, and “random” performance issues—yet many teams never look at GC evidence. In integration platforms such as webMethods Integration Server, this matters even more: workloads are long-running, concurrent, and often create large volumes of short-lived objects (pipelines, documents, strings, adapter outputs, transformation data). When GC is unhealthy, the symptoms are operational: thread pool exhaustion, timeouts, throughput collapse, and unpredictable response times. ...

October 5, 2025 · 8 min · 1547 words · me

From HTTP Requests to CPU Cycles

Below is a long-form, end-to-end technical blog post, written as if for experienced developers who want to truly understand how computers run networked applications. It’s conceptual, precise, and practical, not academic fluff. From HTTP Requests to CPU Cycles: A Practical Mental Model of Computer Systems Modern software often hides the machine behind layers of abstraction: frameworks, runtimes, containers, cloud platforms. This is powerful — but it also creates blind spots. ...

September 28, 2025 · 5 min · 1048 words · me

Redis + Kafka not equal to CQRS - Command Query Responsibility Segregation

Reference Architecture: Redis + Kafka for Fast Reads and Event Propagation 1. Purpose This document describes a reference architecture where: Redis is used to accelerate synchronous read paths Kafka is used to propagate state changes asynchronously The application layer is the sole coordinator of state and events This architecture optimises for: Low latency API responses Decoupled downstream processing Independent scaling of consumers Eventual consistency across systems It does not assume microservices, CQRS, or event sourcing by default. ...

September 21, 2025 · 4 min · 753 words · me

Redis + Kafka

Redis + Kafka: Fast Reads with Event-Driven Change Propagation Overview Redis and Kafka are often presented together, yet they solve orthogonal problems: Redis optimises synchronous access to current state Kafka propagates asynchronous state changes to interested consumers Used together, they enable: Low-latency API responses Decoupled distribution of data changes Independent scaling of read paths and consumers This article explains how they complement each other in practice, without implying any direct coupling or “magic integration”. ...

September 14, 2025 · 4 min · 683 words · me

Authentication

A Comprehensive Guide to Modern Authentication Mechanisms, Protocols, Standards and Best Practices Authentication is at the core of every digital interaction. Whether you’re logging in to a banking app, requesting data from an API or granting temporary access to a third-party service, authentication defines who you are and whether you should be allowed to proceed. Over the past decades, authentication has evolved from simple username–password checks to sophisticated, multi-stage, cryptographically secure protocols designed to protect users and services across distributed, cloud-first environments. ...

September 7, 2025 · 9 min · 1780 words · me

ngrok

Understanding ngrok: Secure Tunnelling, Developer Productivity and Beyond Modern software development increasingly depends on rapid feedback cycles, secure access to local workloads, and seamless integration with external cloud-based systems. Tools that allow safe exposure of local resources to the internet have therefore become a natural part of modern development workflows. Amongst all available tunnelling tools, ngrok remains one of the most widely adopted solutions across individual developers, teams, enterprises and platform-level automation environments. ...

August 31, 2025 · 8 min · 1693 words · me

UV

UV: The High-Performance Python Package & Project Manager Built in Rust The Python ecosystem has no shortage of packaging tools—pip, virtualenv, pipenv, poetry, conda, rye, and others—but it has lacked something essential: a unified, extremely fast, modern, user-friendly solution that handles installation, environment management, project workflows, dependency resolution, and Python version management all in one place, without the typical performance issues of Python-based tooling. Enter UV: a next-generation Python package and project manager from Astral (formerly Astral Software), written entirely in Rust for maximum speed, safety, and modern ergonomics. ...

August 24, 2025 · 7 min · 1331 words · me

JSON-RPC

JSON-RPC: A Complete and In-Depth Guide to the Lightweight Remote Procedure Call Protocol Remote Procedure Call (RPC) systems have been part of software engineering for decades, long before REST, GraphQL, or gRPC entered the scene. Among the many RPC variants, JSON-RPC stands out for its simplicity, language neutrality, and minimal overhead. In an increasingly interconnected digital landscape, where microservices, distributed back ends, IoT platforms and blockchain ecosystems depend on clean and efficient interfaces, JSON-RPC has seen a strong resurgence. ...

August 17, 2025 · 9 min · 1862 words · me