Many companies are moving from a single application code base to a microservices-based approach to software development. Getting started can be a daunting task and using some of the following tools can make that move a lot more manageable.

In a microservices ecosystem with frequent deployments of many disparate yet interconnected components, development teams rely on the CI/CD pipeline more heavily than ever to ensure smooth deployments. In addition to streamlining the deployment process, CI/CD remains key to test automation, serving as the central system for kicking off and running automated tests. If you have something you want to automate, you're going to want a CI/CD pipeline.

If you've ever worked with an API at any level, you've no doubt used the prominent API platform, Postman, and as an industry, we've come to rely on the company for guidance. Postman's 2022 State of the API Report highlights the criticality of dependency management in every software development story, something Architect believes in and why we built our product to facilitate internal discovery. The report also shows that companies remain invested in API development and integration, and API-first companies experience a higher level of success than those for whom API development is an afterthought.

The demand for speed and agility in software production has driven most industries to transition from monolithic to microservice architecture. Developers now build applications into segments of smaller and more manageable pieces. Hence, adding new product lines, functionalities, and capabilities is easier, yielding accessible and scalable products. However, it's crucial to prioritize performance testing and monitoring for your microservice applications.

The data pipeline sits at the heart of any business intelligence process. If you've ever shopped from a mobile application or website, then you've experienced the power of a data pipeline. Companies like Nordstrom and Macy's use data pipelines to stream data from on-prem and cloud-based databases to provide real-time inventory and pricing data that make your shopping experience possible. They also extract data collected from their mobile app and website and push it along with the data generated by point-of-sale devices in stores to create reports and forecast future sales.

Whenever you set up a system or develop and publish an application, there will be secrets involved. Previously, we published this article explaining the basics of secrets and secret management. In this follow-up piece, we explore how to manage secrets in a Kubernetes environment and how you can achieve this using kubectl and YAML.

When working on the front-end portion of an application, you may need to interact with data from a back-end server at several locations within the codebase. This is often necessary for functions like updating a user's shopping cart or providing access to premium features.

Usually, access to this data can only be approved using lengthy alphanumeric API credentials. Entering the same string each time you need to access the server is redundant and time-consuming. Plus, it risks exposing the security-critical key to malicious third parties.

One solution to this monotonous and potentially compromising practice is using environmental variables (EVs).

In this article, I'll explain EVs, how you can use them in your applications, and catalog some best practices that front-end developers should implement when handling them.

The quest for access to stable test environments was once a universal struggle for development teams. Imagine you complete a new feature, and it works perfectly. However, you are eager to see if it works in the real world, where it will be integrated with other code changes. Until then, you are stuck in the land of “it works on my machine,” a place no developer wants to be. Before you can push the new feature to production, you must thoroughly test your code, and to do that, you need access to the right environments.

Web applications are a crucial part of the global digital landscape. Source code hosting and version control, container and cloud technology, and more have pushed application development to great heights. Web applications are now faster, lighter, more stable, and easier to build and manage.

Using source code hosting and version control offered by platforms like GitHub and BitBucket allows developers to collaborate easily anywhere in the world. These solutions provide a seamless opportunity to work on the same project or code simultaneously.

I joined Architect as our first Customer Success hire because after almost ten years in customer-facing roles I've developed some strong opinions about what it means to build a successful and ethical CS team. I want to take our theory and practice of customer success beyond the notions of “customer focus,” “definition of success,” “empathy,” and so on, to consider the ethics of how we manifest these concepts in our organizational cultures. For me, this is the “why” of what we do, which animates the what and the how. So while I do want to say something about the specific steps we're taking as we embark on our journey to build a customer success team, I want to do that within the frame of a clear explanation of why we care about making our customers successful.