Particular Software Blog

Latest articles

• NSBCon 2015: Opening Keynote

  Written by Particular Team on March 9, 2016

  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

  Written by Particular Team on March 7, 2016

  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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• NSBCon 2015: Decomposing the Domain

  Written by Particular Team on March 4, 2016

  In his presentation at NSBCon 2015, Gary Stonerock II talks about transforming a tightly-coupled synchronous process into an SOA/messaging-based solution using NServiceBus. Gary's team recently finished a rebuild of their clinical trial platform, and he shares with us some of the challenges, such as establishing stronger encapsulation and isolation, that they faced and how they overcame them.

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• NSBCon 2015: All about Transports

  Written by Particular Team on March 2, 2016

  Knowing which NServiceBus transport is best for your application is not easy. There are many factors involved in selecting a message transport; distributed transactions, legacy integration, cross-platform capabilities, and cloud deployments are a few that might be considered. At NSBCon 2015 Andreas Öhlund outlines the different transports that are available for NServiceBus. He covers the highlights and lowlights of each. Rather than telling you which transport is the right one, Andreas provides you with the tools to make that decision yourself, within the context of your project.

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• Dish washing and the chain of responsibility

  Written by Daniel Marbach on February 25, 2016

  In our house, cleaning out the dishwasher is a shared chore. My son starts the unloading process by removing a dish or utensil from the dishwasher. If he can put it away, then he does. If the proper location for the dish is out of his reach, then he passes it to his mother. She then goes through the same process; put the dish away if she can, or pass it off to the next person in line, which is me. When I get handed a dish I will put it away and, since I'm 6'4" (1.92m) tall, I can reach all of our cupboard space which means that the process ends with me.

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• I caught an exception. Now what?

  Written by David Boike — Last updated March 19, 2020

  This post is part of the NServiceBus Learning Path.

  

  I can’t draw to save my life, but I love comics, especially ones that capture the essence of what it’s like to be a software developer. They capture the shared pain we all go through and temper it with humor. Luckily, I no longer work for large corporations, so it’s easier now to read Dilbert and laugh without also wincing.

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• The Slippery Slope - Love your job, Live your life... Lose your mind

  Written by Karen Fruchtman on February 9, 2016

  It all began so innocently. Through a friend, I found a job at a small, young, high-tech company. It was a perfect fit for work-life balance—work from home and flexible hours. This job was completely in English, which was a major plus for one who chose to move overseas and, 10 years later, still struggles with a new language! As a bonus, there was a growing human resources component to the job, tapping into my original career choice years ago before I stepped off the corporate ladder to be home with my kids.

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• Beyond ServiceMatrix

  Written by Udi Dahan on December 21, 2015

  When we originally started developing ServiceMatrix, our vision was to develop a tool that could help design distributed systems. One of our main goals was to enable architects to graphically design an immediately executable solution so they could quickly iterate on their designs. We also wanted to help developers who were new to NServiceBus to get started more quickly and avoid many common pitfalls with messaging. Unfortunately, even after years of effort, we just could not find the right balance between the "it just works" code generation experience and leaving developers enough control over how their solution was built. Although we were aware of many other companies who had struggled with this very issue, we also fell into that well-worn trap of thinking "this time will be different". We haven't given up though, and have started down a different path instead - one that doesn't rely on code generation and is more integrated with the rest of the platform.

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• The dangers of ThreadLocal

  Written by Daniel Marbach on December 1, 2015

  Languages and frameworks evolve. We as developers have to learn new things constantly and unlearn already-learned knowledge. Speaking for myself, unlearning is the most difficult part of continuous learning. When I first came into contact with multi-threaded applications in .NET, I stumbled over the ThreadStatic attribute. I made a mental note that this attribute is particularly helpful when you have static fields that should not be shared between threads. At the time that the .NET Framework 4.0 was released, I discovered the ThreadLocal class and how it does a better job assigning default values to thread-specific data. So I unlearned the ThreadStaticAttribute, favoring instead ThreadLocal. Fast forward to some time later, when I started digging into async/await. I fell victim to a belief that thread-specific data still worked. So I was wrong, again, and had to unlearn, again! If only I had known about AsyncLocal earlier. Let's learn and unlearn together!

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• The day I tried to make cookies and learned something about writing documentation

  Written by Peter Giles on November 18, 2015

  

  Have you ever wondered what it might feel like to read product documentation without the benefit of being an expert in the product? It’s a frustrating exercise, but it's usually something I can work around once I figure out the gap between what I know and what the reader knows. It’s never been brought home so completely as it was the other day. I had a hankering for some home-baked cookies and, perhaps stupidly, I figured I’d cook them myself. After all, how hard can it be to follow a bunch of simple instructions to bake some cookies, right?

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