Exploring Axon

Migrating to Axon Server: A Customer Story - with Ben Runchey

In this episode, I spoke with Ben Runchey, one of our solutions engineers here at AxonIQ. In his previous project, Ben went from using various tools, such as MongoDB, RabbitMQ, SNS, and SQS, to using Axon Framework and Axon Server as the messaging platform, event store, and more. We talked about the challenges and the benefits of making this decision. We also discussed scalability, monitoring, planning, education, and much more. 

 

Ben and I also briefly talked about monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana for Axon Server that our colleagues, Stefan Dragisic, worked on and the benefits of using it. You can find out more about it here.

 

Connect with Ben on Linkedin. Sara on LinkedIn

Connect with Sara on Linkedin and Twitter. 

For more information about us visit axoniq.io

Axon Avro Serializer - with Simon Zambrovski & Jan Galinski

In this episode, I spoke with Simon Zambrovski and Jan Galinski of the Hamburg-based IT consulting firm, Holisticon, about the Axon Avro serializer, that they have been working on for the past year. 

We discussed what Avro is and why one would want to use it. Simon discussed the advantages and disadvantages of using the already-implemented Xtreme or Jackson serializers in Axon Framework, and Jan talked about why Avro can be a better tool of serialization. They talked about the schema-first approach and the schema registry. Simon explained how the Avro Axon serializer works and Jan further talked about how upcasting would work using this approach.

You can find the GitHub repository here, and the secondary library (the adaptor), here. Simon and Jan have written great documentation for the Axon Avro serializer as well, which I highly recommend everyone to check out.

 

Connect with Simon, Jan, and Sara on Twitter. 

For more information about us visit axoniq.io

CQRS, Event Sourcing & More - with Greg Young

In this episode, I spoke with Greg Young about why he came up with the notion of CQRS and the history behind it. We also talked about the benefits of using event sourcing and why versioning in event sourcing is such an important topic to cover. Greg has written a book about versioning in event-sourced applications that you can read here. 

We also spent some time discussing Greg’s new project. He is creating a theorem-proofed computer language that can help make the process of testing an application much easier. This language would allow the compiler to recognize the tests that are going to fail ahead of time, and therefore, help improve the overall quality of the application. 

 

You can connect with Greg on Twitter. 

Connect with me on Twitter and on LinkedIn.

For more information about us visit axoniq.io

Data Protection Module - with Yvonne Ceelie

In this episode, I spoke with my colleague and the lead developer of Axon Cloud, Yvonne Ceelie, about protecting sensitive data in event-sourced applications. 

We discussed what sensitive data is and why it can be challenging to protect it in distributed, message-driven systems. We talked about ways of encrypting your data, such as Crypto Shredding and where the data is stored. 

Yvonne introduced the Data Protection Module using Axon Framework. We talked about Crypto Engine and how it can be implemented. We also covered the JPACryptoEngine and the VaultCryptoEngine in our talk. We discussed how we can meet the “right-to-be-forgotten requirements” in Event-Driven systems. And lastly, Yvonne explained how to use the DP Module without Axon Framework, and the necessary annotations.

This talk highlighted Yvonne’s blog, “Protect sensitive data in an Event-Sourced Application”. You can read her blog and look at her code samples here. 

 

You can connect with Yvonne on LinkedIn. 

Connect with me on Twitter @SaraTorrey and on LinkedIn.

For more information about us visit axoniq.io

Benefits of Using EDA in Business - with Allard Buijze

In this episode, I spoke with our CTO and founder of AxonIQ, Allard Buijze about the importance of using Event-Driven Architecture in businesses. We talked about the benefits of implementing EDA to achieve more growth, agility, better customer and employee experience, and generally speaking, more advanced development in organizations. 

We discussed the details of a few articles published by Gartner and Forrester about the best practices and mistakes that can occur while changing from older technologies to more modernized microservice, DDD, EDA systems. Allard talked about his experiences with customer care, business development, mindset change in organizations, and the process of consulting teams while switching to EDA systems. 

You can connect with Allard on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

Connect with me on Twitter @SaraTorrey and on LinkedIn.

For more information about us visit axoniq.io

Event Storming - part 2 - with Alberto Brandolini

In this episode I continued my conversation with Alberto Brandolini, the creator of Event Storming and the author of Introducing EventStorming – An act of deliberate collective learning and the Founder of Avanscoperta, a technology consultancy. He is also the founder of the Italian Domain-Driven Design community. 

Alberto has been working as a software developer and architect for many years, but in recent years he has been consulting many companies helping them to adapt collaborative thinking and modeling. He leads workshops, which involve various departments of an organization to find the fastest and best ways of deciding on domain models and designing systems. Currently, these workshops are held virtually due to the global pandemic. 

He has also been a keynote speaker in many technology and software-related conferences around the world in the past years. However, currently due to the pandemic he is not participating in as many events. We discussed many challenges and benefits of holding these workshops and talks online.

This talk is divided into two sessions, and I hope you enjoy it!  

To learn more about Alberto’s workshops and upcoming events please visit his website. You can connect with Alberto on Twitter @ziobrando and on LinkedIn. Connect with me on Twitter @SaraTorrey and on LinkedIn.

 For more information about us visit axoniq.io

Event Storming - Part 1 - with Alberto Brandolini

In this episode, I spoke with Alberto Brandolini, the creator of Event Storming and the author of Introducing EventStorming – An act of deliberate collective learning and the Founder of Avanscoperta, a technology consultancy. He is also the founder of the Italian Domain-Driven Design community. 

Alberto has been working as a software developer and architect for many years, but in recent years he has been consulting many companies helping them to adapt collaborative thinking and modeling. He leads workshops, which involve various departments of an organization to find the fastest and best ways of deciding on domain models and designing systems. Currently, these workshops are held virtually due to the global pandemic. 

He has also been a keynote speaker in many technology and software-related conferences around the world in the past years. However, currently due to the pandemic he is not participating in as many events. We discussed many challenges and benefits of holding these workshops and talks online.

This talk is divided into two sessions, and I hope you enjoy it!  

To learn more about Alberto’s workshops and upcoming events please visit his website.

You can connect with Alberto on Twitter @ziobrando and on LinkedIn. Connect with me on Twitter @SaraTorrey and on LinkedIn.

Using Axon Server and More - with Bert Laverman - Part 2

This is the second part of my talk with my colleague Bert Laverman. We continued our talk with Domain-Driven Design. We discussed how Bert found out about the concept, and we delved deeper into some aspects of the DDD-centric systems, such as Ubiquitous Language and Bounded Context. 

Bert also highlighted the benefits of using agile development methodology when designing a system that requires lots of detailed planning and decision making and getting it all done in a timely manner. 

We discussed why software architecture is so important, and lastly but very importantly we talked about Axon Server Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. He also explained the benefits of using Docker and Kubernetes when setting up and using Axon Server. 

You can reach Bert on Twitter @BertLaverman and on LinkedIn. Connect with me on Twitter @SaraTorrey and on LinkedIn.

For more information about us visit axoniq.io

Using Axon Server and More - with Bert Laverman - Part 1

In this episode, I spoke with my colleague Bert Laverman who has been working as a software engineer and architect for the past 30 years. Bert discovered microservices and CQRS while working for an insurance company in the Netherlands and has been working as an architect in the field of DDD, ES, and microservices since. He shared his many exciting and interesting experiences from his early days of his studies and his career with me. He also discussed his experience and contributions at AxonIQ. Our talk was divided into two episodes. In the next episode we'll talk more about DDD and how to set up Axon Server.  
 
You can reach Bert on Twitter @BertLaverman and LinkedIn.
Connect with me on Twitter @SaraTorrey and LinkedIn.
 
For more information about us visit axoniq.io.

Evolving Monolith Systems into Microservices - with Andy Whitaker

In this episode I spoke with Andy Whitaker, a software developer who has been working with various teams in the past years in evolving monolith legacy systems into microservices. Andy discovered Axon Framework in 2017 and with the help of his great team members and the framework he has been able to migrate from monolith systems into microservices successfully. He shared his success stories, but also many of the challenges he has faced in this process. 

You can reach Andy on Twitter @VisualizeITC and on LinkedIn.

Connect with me on Twitter @SaraTorrey and on LinkedIn.

For more information about us visit axoniq.io.

Exception Handling in Axon Framework - with Steven van Beelen

In this episode I spoke with my colleague and Axon Framework’s lead developer, Steven van Beelen. We discussed how exceptions are handled in Axon Framework, and whether or not the framework provides tools to make the process easier for developers. As handling exceptions in CQRS can be tricky we talked about how it is done in command and query sides. We also discussed how events can handle exceptions… or can they?

Steven mentioned a video of him live-coding during our 2020 virtual conference in which he shows exception handling with Axon Framework in code. This video can be found here. 

 

You can reach Steven on Twitter @smcvbeelen and on LinkedIn. I am on Twitter @SaraTorrey and on LinkedIn.

For more information about us visit axoniq.io

Event Handling and Sagas in Axon Framework - with Simon Zambrovski

In this episode I spoke with Simon Zambrovski of Holisticon about event handling and sagas in Axon Framework. We covered other topics such as query handling, storage, event processors, Axon Server, and more. 

Just a note that in this episode Simon referenced an episode about event streaming vs. event sourcing that I recorded with Allard, but I mistook that episode with another one I did with Steven on message handling. I do recommend you to listen to both of these episodes if you haven’t done so yet, as they are relevant to our topic.

Simon and I are active on Twitter @zambrovski and @SaraTorrey

For more information about us visit axoniq.io