Testing is an integral part of software development. Your tests are a living documentation of your system. They inform others how to use your system, but they are so much more than that. One of the most misunderstood parts of Test-Driven Development (TDD) is the “Driven” part of the name. It’s not just about “writing …
The myth that “you can’t do WebSockets with serverless” still persists today, even though we have some very good ways to implement WebSockets without needing to manage any servers. Part of the problem is that many still falsely equate “serverless” with Lambda. But serverless is much more than that. To me, it describes any technology …
Here are four ways you can implement WebSockets using serverless Read More »
DynamoDB announced support for resource-based policies [1] a few days ago. It makes cross-account access to DynamoDB tables easier. You no longer need to assume an IAM role in the target table’s account. I was confused by this update and wondered if it was even a good idea. If you need cross-account access to DynamoDB, …
DynamoDB now supports resource-based policies. But is that a good idea? Read More »
I’m a big fan of AWS Step Functions. I use it to orchestrate all sorts of workflows, from payment processing to map-reduce jobs. Why it’s yet another AWS service you need to learn and pay for. And it introduces additional complexities, such as: It’s hard to test [1]. Your business logic is split between configuration …
When to use Step Functions vs. doing it all in a Lambda function Read More »
“Lambdalith” is a monolithic approach to building serverless applications where a single Lambda function serves an entire API, instead of one function per endpoint. It’s an increasingly popular approach. It provides portability between Lambda functions and container applications. You can lift and shift an existing application into Lambda without rewriting it. You can use web …
When to use API Gateway vs. Lambda Function URLs Read More »
I thought Lambda needed a specialised runtime. One that works well with its resource-constraint execution environment. I even floated a few ideas in the past but sadly I don’t have the chops to make them happen myself. So I was pleasantly surprised when AWS open-sourced the LLRT runtime for JavaScript [1]! What is LLRT? LLRT, or Low …
First impressions of the fastest JavaScript runtime for Lambda Read More »
I shared on Linkedin [1] the other day that you should avoid using Cognito subs as the user ID for your system. One of the reasons is that a user’s sub does not carry over when you migrate to a new user pool. Someone responded by asking “Is this type of migration really that common …
What’s the best way to migrate Cognito users to a new user pool? Read More »
By now, most of us have moved away from using IAM users for CI/CD pipelines. Instead, we’d use dedicated CI/CD roles, one for each pipeline. This forces us to consider who can assume this role. Identity federation is widely supported by 3rd-party providers such as GitHub Actions [1]. So, no more putting IAM credentials in …
How to secure CI/CD roles without burning production to the ground Read More »
CloudFormation recently announced the IaC generator [1]. It lets you: Scan your AWS account and catalogue manually recreated resources. Select manually created resources and capture them in a generated CloudFormation template. Concurrently, CDK announced [2] a new cdk migrate command. Which lets you generate a CDK application from CloudFormation. On paper, these sound amazing! It …
First impressions of CloudFormation’s IaC generator and CDK migrate Read More »
Imagine this… You have followed AWS best practices and set up a dead-letter queue (DLQ) or an OnFailure destination for every async Lambda function. (sidebar: you should prefer Lambda Destination over DLQs, here’s why [1]) A message arrives in your DLQ. You are alerted right away because you have alarms on all of your DLQs. …
How would you reprocess Lambda dead-letter queue messages on demand? Read More »
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