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Particular Software Blog

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  • Fallacy #1: The network is reliable

    Anyone with a cable or DSL modem knows how temperamental network connections can be. The Internet just stops working, and the only way to get it going again is to unplug it for 15 seconds. (Or, put another way, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”)

    Thankfully, better solutions exist for professional data centers than consumer-grade modems, but problems can persist.

    As a company that does reliable messaging, we’ve really heard it all. Don’t worry, the names will be changed to protect the innocent.

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  • NServiceBus 6.0 Public Beta

    We've been hard at work on the next major version of NServiceBus for a long time, and we're really excited to show it to you for the first time today! With major improvements in performance, top-to-bottom async support, and an even cleaner API, this version takes NServiceBus to a whole new level. And as of today, NServiceBus 6.0 is now available for public beta.

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  • What Starbucks can teach us about software scalability

    Starbucks Drive Thru

    In 2004, Gregor Hohpe published his brilliant post “Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit.” When I read it, my time working at Starbucks during my college years suddenly became relevant. Over the years, I gradually realized there’s even more that programmers can learn from the popular coffee chain.

    Although many people may want to build scalable software, it can be much harder than it first appears. As we work on individual tasks, we can fall into a trap, believing all things are equally important, need the same resources, and happen synchronously in a predefined order.

    It turns out they don’t—at least not in scalable systems, and certainly not at Starbucks.

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  • NSBCon 2015: Platform-Oriented Architecture

    In the second keynote of NSBCon 2015, Ted Neward introduces the concept of Platform-Oriented Architecture (POA) as the logical successor to the currently used SOA/REST architectural approaches. POA is a developer-focused approach that has an established communication backplane, an entity definition, a built in agent model and a set of expectations around various execution topics. Ted also talks about the relationship between POA and operating systems, programming languages, and database engines.

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  • NSBCon 2015: Top Mistakes Using NServiceBus

    One of the great things about NServiceBus is that it is so flexible. But with that flexibility comes the opportunity to do inadvisable things. What kind of things, you ask? At NSBCon 2015, Kijana Woodard shares the top mistakes (14 in all) that, in his opinion, developers routinely make when using NServiceBus. From row-based database operations instead of set-based ones to using callbacks as a permanent solution, Kijana covers a myriad of different issues that are inadvertently, or possibly intentionally, introduced to many NServiceBus projects. Watch Kijana's NSBCon 2015 presentation and learn how to avoid the pitfalls that many developers make.

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  • NSBCon 2015: Behind the Scenes at Particular Software

    Have you ever wondered how Particular Software makes NServiceBus? At NSBCon 2015, David Boike outlines the systems, tools, and methods used in Particular to manage a large number of Github repositories, along with the techniques that make sure all of their releases follow semantic versioning.

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  • NSBCon 2015: Full-Stack, Message-Oriented Programming with Akka.NET Actors

    The Moore's Law party is over. We cannot make processors more powerful by making them faster. We have no choice but to embrace multiple processors, multi-core processors, and multiple threads in our code. But how do you do this? In his session at NSBCon 2015, Andrew Skotzko introduces us to message-based programming with the actor model and Akka.NET. Andrew shows how immutable messages, combined with the actor behaving as a unit of concurrency, make taking advantage of all those processors and cores much easier.

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  • NSBCon 2015: RavenHQ in the Cloud

    Not all NServiceBus implementations are on-premises. More and more people are releasing applications into the cloud. Jonathan Matheus speaks at NSBCon 2015 about the challenges and rewards of working in the cloud. As the official cloud hosting provider for RavenDB, RavenHQ uses NServiceBus to handle database provisioning and usage-based billing.

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  • NSBCon 2015: Opening Keynote

    Udi Dahan opens NSBCon 2015 by summarizing the current state of the NServiceBus ecosystem. He outlines the foundation of our practices over the last year by comparing Particular Software to a duck on water: it looks calm on the surface, but below the waterline, it's paddling like hell. This ethos of continually working to stay ahead of the issues that NServiceBus users encounter sets the stage for a discussion on the current and future state of the platform. Udi explains the [retirement of ServiceMatrix](http://particular.net/blog/beyond-servicematrix), new features in ServiceInsight, and the future of NServiceBus with the coming release of v6.

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  • NSBCon 2015: Integration Patterns with NServiceBus

    This post is part of the NServiceBus Learning Path.

    Dealing with legacy systems is difficult. Complete rewrites take time. Components and functionality need to be migrated in stages while the remainder of the application stays operational. There's also the issue of integrating with third party systems and the impact that these can have on any system you're trying to improve. Jimmy Bogard deals with these types of legacy system problems on a daily basis. Most of his work is rescuing rewrite projects, some of which are the second or even third attempt to get rid of a legacy system. At NSBCon 2015, he talks about various integration patterns he uses in his projects and explains how NServiceBus helped him solve a few typical challenges.

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