News Aggregator


SBOMs in Action: Securing Your Golden AMIs From Build to Runtime

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 20:23:25

Golden Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) are the foundation for launching consistent and efficient instances in your AWS cloud environment. Ensuring their security and immutability is paramount. This guide delves into how Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs), cryptographic signing, and runtime validation create a robust framework for building and maintaining secure golden AMIs. Steps Involved in Building Golden AMIs Step Description Start with a Trusted Base Image Begin by selecting a minimal, reputable base image, such as AWS-provided base AMIs that are regularly updated with the latest security patches. Add Necessary Packages Install required packages using package managers like yum, apt, or pip. Ensure that packages are sourced from trusted repositories and specify version numbers for consistency. Configure Users and Permissions Follow the Principle of Least Privilege when creating user accounts, removing unnecessary default users and groups. Configure SSH for key-based authentication and restrict root access. Functional Testing Verify the functionality of installed software and applications, including network connectivity and essential system services, to ensure everything works as expected. Vulnerability Scanning Utilize tools such as Amazon Inspector or Grype to scan the AMI for vulnerabilities. Address any critical findings promptly to mitigate potential security risks. Understanding Drift and Its Causes AMI drift occurs when a running instance diverges from its original AMI configuration. This can result from ad-hoc administrator modifications, automated patching, configuration management tools like Puppet or Chef, and changes by application users. These deviations emphasize the need for ongoing monitoring and management of AMI configurations in cloud environments to maintain system consistency and security.

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Questioning an Image Database With Local AI/LLM on Ollama and Spring AI

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 19:23:25

The AIDocumentLibraryChat project has been extended to include an image database that can be questioned for images. It uses the LLava model of Ollama, which can analyze images. The image search uses embeddings with the PGVector extension of PostgreSQL. Architecture The AIDocumentLibraryChat project has this architecture:

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GBase 8s Database Locking Issues and Performance Optimization Strategies

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 18:23:25

Database locking issues have always been a challenging aspect of database management. In the GBase 8s database, table locks can lead to the locking of table headers, data rows, and other components, which can result in various error messages. This article provides an in-depth understanding of the locking situations in GBase 8s and offers a series of effective resolution strategies. 1. Locking Situations The 8s locking issue can lock components such as table headers and specific data rows. Different lock conflicts will trigger different error messages, such as 244: Could not do a physical-order read to fetch next row. These are essentially lock conflict issues.

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Alluxio Enterprise AI 3.2: Enhancing GPU Utilization and Data Access for AI Workloads

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 17:23:25

In an era where AI and machine learning are pushing the boundaries of computational power, efficient GPU utilization, and data access have become critical bottlenecks. Alluxio, a pioneer in data orchestration for analytics and AI, has unveiled its latest offering, Alluxio Enterprise AI 3.2, to address these challenges head-on. This release promises to transform how organizations leverage their GPU resources and manage data for AI workloads, offering a blend of performance, flexibility, and ease of use that could reshape the landscape of AI infrastructure. Unleashing GPU Power: Anywhere, Anytime One of the standout features of Alluxio Enterprise AI 3.2 is its ability to enable GPU utilization anywhere. This capability is a game-changer in a world where GPU resources are often scarce and distributed across various environments. Organizations can now run AI workloads wherever GPUs are available, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in a hybrid setup.

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Choosing the Best CSS Frameworks for Enterprise Web Applications

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 16:23:25

The heart of the web application is Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which allows you to style your web pages and make them look better and richer. There are many CSS frameworks available for you to choose from when architecting an enterprise web application. These frameworks often provide you with responsive standard styles that are pre-built for the same purpose. When choosing a particular framework, look for specific product requirements; it also allows for more customization and the ability to scale and perform when tied to the web app. I will be making a detailed analysis of some popular CSS frameworks like Bootstrap CSS, Tailwind CSS, Chakra UI, and Next UI. 1. Tailwind CSS Overview As per its definition, Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building modern websites without ever leaving your HTML. This allows the developers to directly inject the classes into the respective HTML elements. This takes away all the groundwork that the developer has to do to spin the web page with proper styling. In short, there is no need to maintain an external style sheet. It's easy to customize and scale.

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Why Creating Wrapper Classes for Component Libraries Is a Great Idea in Web Development

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 15:38:25

No wonder there are tons of third-party component libraries available that can be integrated into your project to speed up the development process. Libraries like Angular Material UI, Bootstrap, Chakra UI, Next UI, and others offer various other rich features that are lightweight, fast, and adhere to accessibility norms. However, direct access to library components without an abstraction layer could lead to numerous inconsistencies and maintainability issues in the future. This is the primary reason I insist on creating classes that encapsulate the original composition, which I refer to as wrapper classes. These classes are easy to create and allow more flexibility and consistency when building an enterprise web application. Benefits of Creating Wrapper Classes 1. Consistency When it comes to consistency, I mean the look and feel of the components throughout the web application. Would you allow dropdowns or radio buttons to appear differently? The answer is no. Wrapping ensures uniformity and consistency across the app, enabling the components to seamlessly integrate with the product's specific branding. Here, branding refers to the themes and skins of the common components that you will use throughout the app.

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Penetration Testing for Beginners: A Step-By-Step Guide

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 15:23:25

In an era where digital transformation is rapidly advancing, the importance of cybersecurity cannot be overstated. One of the essential aspects of maintaining robust security is penetration testing, commonly known as pentesting. This guide aims to provide beginners with a comprehensive understanding of penetration testing, offering a step-by-step approach to getting started in this critical field. Introduction to Penetration Testing Penetration testing is a simulated cyber attack against a computer system, network, or web application to identify security vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. The primary goal is to find and fix these vulnerabilities before they can be leveraged by malicious actors. Penetration testing can be manual or automated and typically involves various methods and tools to evaluate the security of an organization’s IT infrastructure.

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Factors to Consider: Data Warehouse Modernization

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 14:23:25

A successful data warehouse migration or modernization journey needs a great deal of planning. As part of the planning, you will have to choose between various products/end points and the path they will have to offer you.  Below are some of the factors that may help you to consider the right path forward.

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An Introduction To Open Table Formats

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 13:23:25

The evolution of data management architectures from warehouses to lakes and now to lakehouses represents a significant shift in how businesses handle large datasets. The data lakehouse model combines the best of both worlds, offering the cost-effectiveness and flexibility of data lakes with the robust functionality of data warehouses. This is achieved through innovative table formats that provide a metadata layer, enabling more intelligent interaction between storage and compute resources. How Did We Get to Open Table Formats? Hive: The Original Table Format Running analytics on Hadoop data lakes initially required complex Java jobs using the MapReduce framework, which was not user-friendly for many analysts. To address this, Facebook developed Hive in 2009, allowing users to write SQL instead of MapReduce jobs.

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Simplifying Developer Workflows: How Effective Backup Strategy Reduces Cognitive Load

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 12:23:25

It’s easy to imagine the burden that you, as a developer, can feel rushing to perform your tasks quickly, sometimes forgetting about the amount of confusion you can feel by reading and producing the code fast. This confusion can cost both time and money and have an awful impact on the project you work on. This state of confusion, which takes place when a developer faces an overwhelming amount of information and multitasking, is not an imaginary sandcastle. This mental state is called cognitive overload. Increased forgetfulness, lack of focus, hampered creative thinking and innovation, and difficulties in learning new concepts are all symptoms of cognitive overload. What can you do to reduce it and have peace of mind?

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The Ultimate Guide to API Testing: Everything You Need To Know

Aggregated on: 2024-07-15 11:23:25

APIs are becoming increasingly crucial in today’s society, and as technology advances, so will our dependence on APIs. Everything you communicate on the internet these days transmits using an API (Application Programming Interface).  When integrating them into our technologies, we must also consider API testing. Because, if we think about it, our APIs, like anything else, need to be rigorously evaluated on a variety of quality attributes. 

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Comparative Analysis of pgVector and OpenSearch for Vector Databases

Aggregated on: 2024-07-14 13:23:25

Vector databases allow for efficient data storage and retrieval by storing them as points or vectors instead of traditional rows and columns. Two popular vector database options are pgVector extension for PostgreSQL and Amazon OpenSearch Service. This article compares the specifications, strengths, limitations, capabilities, and use cases for pgVector and OpenSearch to help inform decision-making when selecting the best-suited option for various needs. Introduction The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have necessitated the development of specialized databases that can efficiently store and retrieve high-dimensional data. Vector databases have emerged as a critical component in this landscape, enabling applications such as recommendation systems, image search, and natural language processing. This article compares two prominent vector database solutions, pgVector extension for PostgreSQL and Amazon OpenSearch Service, directly relevant to your roles as technical professionals, database administrators, and AI and ML practitioners.

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Testcontainers-Based Load Testing Bench

Aggregated on: 2024-07-13 13:08:24

Using Testcontainers has radically improved the process of working with test scenarios. Thanks to this tool, creating environments for integration tests has become simpler (see the article Isolation in Testing with Kafka). Now we can easily launch containers with different versions of databases, message brokers, and other services. For integration tests, Testcontainers has proven indispensable. Although load testing is less common than functional testing, it can be much more enjoyable. Studying graphs and analyzing the performance of a particular service can bring real pleasure. Such tasks are rare, but they are especially exciting for me. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate an approach to creating a setup for load testing in the same way that regular integration tests are written: in the form of Spock tests using Testcontainers in a Gradle project environment. Load-testing utilities such as Gatling, WRK, and Yandex.Tank are used.

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7 Essential Tips for a Production ClickHouse Cluster

Aggregated on: 2024-07-12 23:08:24

ClickHouse is the fastest, most resource-efficient OLAP database which can query billions of rows in milliseconds and is trusted by thousands of companies for real-time analytics. Here are seven tips to help you spin up a production ClickHouse cluster and avoid the most common mistakes.

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Why You Need to Shift Left With Mobile Testing

Aggregated on: 2024-07-12 21:08:24

I feel like there’s always been a love-hate relationship with the concept of testing. Without a doubt, the benefits of testing whatever you are building help avoid customers reporting those same discoveries. That’s the love part of the relationship. The hate part is when project timelines cause testing to become a lower priority…often to the point where it becomes a backlog wishlist item that rarely surfaces in a current sprint. This almost guarantees customers will contact you with unexpected outcomes.

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Optimizing MySQL Performance: Best Practices for Database Efficiency

Aggregated on: 2024-07-12 18:08:24

As a cornerstone of many web applications, MySQL is a robust and reliable database management system. However, achieving optimal performance in MySQL requires a strategic approach to configuration, indexing, and query optimization. In this blog post, we’ll explore key practices to enhance MySQL performance, ensuring your database operates at peak efficiency. 1. Fine-Tuning MySQL Configuration MySQL comes with a default configuration that is typically conservative to ensure it works on a wide range of systems. However, these settings might not be ideal for your specific workload. Here are some configuration parameters to adjust:

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API Implementation on AWS Serverless Architecture

Aggregated on: 2024-07-12 16:08:24

This article describes the implementation of RESTful API on AWS serverless architecture. It provides a detailed overview of the architecture, data flow, and AWS services that can be used. This article also describes the benefits of the serverless architecture over the traditional approach. What Is Serverless Architecture? Serverless architecture, also known as serverless computing or function as a service, is a software design approach that allows developers to build and run applications without managing the underlying infrastructure. A cloud service provider is responsible for managing and scaling the cloud infrastructure, including provisioning servers to run applications, databases, and storage.

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How To Reduce Memory Consumption in Integration Tests With Kafka Using GraalVM

Aggregated on: 2024-07-12 13:08:24

In this article, I want to share my experience with creating a native image for EmbeddedKafka using GraalVM. Utilizing this image in integration tests not only speeds up the execution of test scenarios but also reduces memory consumption. Interestingly, when compared to using confluentinc/cp-kafka in Testcontainers, there is a noticeable difference in both speed and memory usage — and it's not in favor of the latter. EmbeddedKafka, Testcontainers, and GraalVM A brief overview of the key components used in the project:

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Implementing Micro Frontends in Angular: Step-By-Step Guide

Aggregated on: 2024-07-11 23:08:23

Micro frontends are architectural styles in which independently deliverable frontend applications form a unified whole. This method enables teams to work independently on different parts of an application for scalability and easier maintenance. This guide will demonstrate how to implement micro frontends in Angular applications, the benefits and challenges, and the steps with code samples. Benefits of Micro Frontends Scalability: Teams can develop, test, and deploy features independently, scaling the development process. Autonomous teams: Different teams can work on separate micro frontends, using their preferred tools and frameworks. Maintainability: Smaller codebases are easier to maintain, understand, and refactor. Incremental upgrades: Micro frontends can be updated incrementally without affecting the entire application. Challenges of Micro Frontends Complexity: Increased complexity in managing multiple repositories and coordinating deployments. Performance: Potential performance overhead due to multiple independent bundles. Shared state management: Managing shared state across micro frontends can be challenging. Consistency: Ensuring a consistent look and feel across different micro frontends requires careful planning. When more than one team works on various areas of an application, differences in design and user experience usually creep in. To mitigate this, a solid design system and common component library should be established across all teams. This includes defining a set of UI components, styles, and guidelines that are uniform across the application. It also requires regular communication and collaboration between teams to align on design decisions and consistency.

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AI: Do You Trust It?

Aggregated on: 2024-07-11 20:08:23

We have lived in a period of AI shift for the past few years. AI is everywhere: searching, learning, text processing, code review, code writing assistance, and many other systems have arisen in recent years. It seems everyone is eager to apply AI wherever possible even where it might not be needed. I'm not an exception. Under the influence of this wave, I decided to try to create something on my own that would help me in everyday life. So here I will tell you my own story of writing an application with the use of AI, along with some thoughts about it, of course, which are rather contradictory. What Is the Task? As a developer in a distributed team, I usually need to explain my weekly progress to my colleagues. I know that for some it might look contradictory, but we prefer text-based reports over face-to-face communication. All the benefits of this approach have been mentioned many times already (like here, here, and here), and it’s just how we prefer to do it. So, after a while, we came up with a particular document format and structure for our weekly reports. It is called SIMBA. This format is extremely simple:

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Create JWT Using DataWeave JWT Library

Aggregated on: 2024-07-11 17:08:23

Recently in one of my projects, there was a requirement to create JWT within the MuleSoft application and send that as an OAuth token to the backend for authentication. After doing some research, I got to know several ways to create JWT like Java code, DataWeave code, JWT sign module, etc. Java code can be complex to implement, Dataweave code does not work for the RSA algorithm and the client didn’t want to use a custom module like the JWT sign module. Finally, I got to know about the DataWeave JWT Library available in MuleSoft Exchange. In this blog, I will be describing the process of creating JWT using the Dataweave JWT Library available in Mulesoft Exchange which supports both HMAC and RSA algorithms.

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A Hands-On Guide To OpenTelemetry: Intro to Observability

Aggregated on: 2024-07-11 16:08:23

Are you ready to start your journey on the road to collecting telemetry data from your applications? Great observability begins with great instrumentation! In this series, you'll explore how to adopt OpenTelemetry (OTel) and how to instrument an application to collect tracing telemetry. You'll learn how to leverage out-of-the-box automatic instrumentation tools and understand when it's necessary to explore more advanced manual instrumentation for your applications. By the end of this series, you'll have an understanding of how telemetry travels from your applications to the OpenTelemetry Collector, and be ready to bring OpenTelemetry to your future projects. Everything discussed here is supported by a hands-on, self-paced workshop authored by Paige Cruze.

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Salesforce Bulk API 2.0: Streamlining Large-Scale Data Operations

Aggregated on: 2024-07-11 15:08:23

Have you ever faced the challenge of managing large data operations within Salesforce, such as updating, inserting, deleting, or querying records? These operations might arise from one-time data migration projects or ongoing data integration needs with external systems. In such scenarios, Salesforce Bulk API 2.0 is your solution. This robust API is designed to handle large-scale data operations efficiently, simplifying and streamlining the process. Salesforce Bulk API 2.0 is a REST-based API, that runs the requested operation asynchronously. It is designed to simplify bulk operations within Salesforce as well as to improve the performance and reliability of bulk data processing. The following are key features of Bulk API 2.0. 

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Revolutionizing Enterprise Testing: Overcoming Challenges

Aggregated on: 2024-07-11 14:08:23

Software development is ever-growing, and agility and speed are paramount to ensure quick delivery time. In this fast-paced environment, continuous testing has emerged as a game changer. By integrating the testing cycle into the entire software delivery lifecycle organizations can ensure that the applications meet the highest quality standards while keeping up the pace with the ever-increasing demand for rapid releases. However, as enterprises adopt continuous testing, they often encounter multiple challenges that can obstruct progress and hinder the test effectiveness. In this article, we will walk through the challenges enterprises can face while adopting continuous testing.

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Isolation in Testing With Kafka

Aggregated on: 2024-07-11 13:08:23

The experience of running Kafka in test scenarios has reached a high level of convenience thanks to the use of Test containers and enhanced support in Spring Boot 3.1 with the @ServiceConnection annotation. However, writing and maintaining integration tests with Kafka remains a challenge. This article describes an approach that significantly simplifies the testing process by ensuring test isolation and providing a set of tools to achieve this goal. With the successful implementation of isolation, Kafka tests can be organized in such a way that at the stage of result verification, there is full access to all messages that have arisen during the test, thereby avoiding the need for forced waiting methods such as Thread.sleep(). This method is suitable for use with Test containers, Embedded Kafka, or other methods of running the Kafka service (e.g., a local instance).

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LLMs Progression and Path Forward

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 23:08:23

In recent years, there have been significant advancements in language models. This progress is a result of extensive training and tuning on billions of parameters, along with benchmarking for commercial use. The origins of this work can be traced back to the 1950s when research in Natural Language Understanding and Processing began.  This article aims to provide an overview of the history and evolution of language models over the last 70 years. It will also examine the current available Large Language Models (LLMs), including their architecture, tuning parameters, enterprise readiness, system configurations, and more, to gain a high-level understanding of their training and inference processes. This exploration will allow us to appreciate the progress in this field and assess the options available for commercial use. 

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How To Choose Between Node.js and Its Alternatives

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 22:08:23

Have you ever chosen some technology without considering alternatives? How significant is conducting the research for selecting a reasonable tech stack? How would you approach the evaluation of suitable options? In this article, we’ll focus our attention on Node.js alternatives and core aspects for consideration when comparing other solutions with one of the most used web technologies like Node.js.  The question of what technology to select for the project confronts every team starting software development. It’s clear that the tech choice would play a critical role in implementing the outlined product. The development team has to put considerable effort into finding tech solutions capable of meeting the set requirements. 

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How BERT Enhances the Features of NLP

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 21:08:23

Large language models have played a catalytic role in how human language is comprehended and processed. NLP has bridged the communication gap between humans and machines, leading to seamless customer experiences. NLP is great for interpreting simple languages with straightforward intent. But it still has a long way to go when it comes to interpreting ambiguity in text arising from homonyms, synonyms, irony, sarcasm, and more.

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Data Migration From GaussDB to GBase8a

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 20:08:23

Exporting Data From GaussDB Comparison of Export Methods Export Tool Export Steps Applicable Scenarios and Notes Using GDS Tool to Export Data to a Regular File SystemNote: The GDS tool must be installed on the server where the data files are exported Remote Export Mode: Export business data from the cluster to an external host. 1. Plan the export path, create GDS operation users, and set write permissions for the GDS user on the export path. 2. Install, configure, and start GDS on the server where data will be exported. 3. Create an external table in the cluster, with the location path in the format "gsfs://192.168.0.90:5000/".Local Export Mode: Export business data from the cluster to the host where the cluster nodes are located. This strategy is tailored for numerous small files. 1. Plan the export path and create directories to store exported data files on each DN in the cluster, such as "/output_data", and change the owner of this path to omm. 2. Install, configure, and start GDS on the server where data will be exported. 3. Create an external table in the cluster, with the location path in the format "file:///output_data/". GDS tools suitable for scenarios with high concurrency and large data exports. Utilizes multi-DN parallelism to export data from the database to data files, improving overall export performance. Does not support direct export to HDFS file system.Notes on Remote Export: 1. Supports concurrent export by multiple GDS services, but one GDS can only provide export services for one cluster at a time. 2. Configure GDS services within the same intranet as the cluster nodes. Export speed is affected by network bandwidth. The recommended network configuration is 10GE. 3. Supported data file formats: TEXT, CSV, and FIXED. Single-row data size must be <1GB.Notes on Local Export: 1. Data will be evenly split and generated in the specified folders on the cluster nodes, occupying disk space on the cluster nodes. 2. Supports data file formats: TEXT, CSV, and FIXED. Single-row data size must be <1GB. gs_dump and gs_dumpall Toolsgs_dump supports exporting a single database or its objects.gs_dumpall supports exporting all databases in the cluster or common global objects in each database. The tools support exporting content at the database level, schema level, and second level. Each level can be separately defined to export the entire content, only object definitions, or only data files. Step 1: The omm operating system user logs into any host with MPPDB service installed and executes: source $ {BIGDATA_HOME}/mppdb/.mppdbgs_profile command to start environment variablesStep 2: Use gs_dump to export the postgres database: gs_dump -W Bigdata@123 -U jack -f /home/omm/backup/postgres_backup.tar -p 25308 postgres -F t 1. Export the entire database information, including data and all object definitions. 2. Export the full information of all databases, including each database in the cluster and common global objects (including roles and tablespace information). 3. Export only all object definitions, including tablespace, database definitions, function definitions, schema definitions, table definitions, index definitions, and stored procedure definitions. 4. Export only data, excluding all object definitions. GDS External Table Remote Export Example Shell   mkdir -p /output_data groupadd gdsgrp useradd -g gdsgrp gds_user chown -R gds_user:gdsgrp /output_data /opt/bin/gds/gds -d /output_data -p 192.168.0.90:5000 -H 10.10.0.1/24 -D CREATE FOREIGN TABLE foreign_tpcds_reasons ( r_reason_sk integer not null, r_reason_id char(16) not null, r_reason_desc char(100) ) SERVER gsmpp_server OPTIONS (LOCATION 'gsfs://192.168.0.90:5000/', FORMAT 'CSV',ENCODING 'utf8',DELIMITER E'\x08', QUOTE E'\x1b', NULL '') WRITE ONLY; INSERT INTO foreign_tpcds_reasons SELECT * FROM reasons; ps -ef|grep gds gds_user 128954 1 0 15:03 ? 00:00:00 gds -d /output_data -p 192.168.0.90:5000 -D gds_user 129003 118723 0 15:04 pts/0 00:00:00 grep gds kill -9 128954

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Dynamic Watermarking on the JVM

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 19:08:23

Displaying images on your website makes for an interesting problem: on one side, you want to make them publicly available; on the other, you want to protect them against undue use. The age-long method to achieve it is watermarking: A digital watermark is a kind of marker covertly embedded in a noise-tolerant signal such as audio, video or image data. It is typically used to identify ownership of the copyright of such signal. "Watermarking" is the process of hiding digital information in a carrier signal; the hidden information should, but does not need to, contain a relation to the carrier signal. Digital watermarks may be used to verify the authenticity or integrity of the carrier signal or to show the identity of its owners. It is prominently used for tracing copyright infringements and for banknote authentication.

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MuleSoft: Best Practices for API Management

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 18:08:23

In today’s digital landscape, APIs have become the backbone of modern software architecture, enabling seamless integration and communication among disparate systems. Effective API management is critical to ensuring that these interfaces are secure, scalable, and maintainable. This article explores the essential best practices for API management, providing insights into design principles, security measures, performance optimization, lifecycle management, documentation strategies, etc. Whether you are a seasoned developer or an API newcomer, these guidelines will help you navigate the complexities of API Management and achieve success in your integration efforts.

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PlatformCon 2024 Session Recap: Platform Engineering and AI

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 17:38:23

Are you curious what experienced practitioners are saying about AI and platform engineering — and its growing impact on development workflows? Look no further than DZone’s latest event with PlatformCon 2024 where our global software community answers these vital questions in an expert panel on all things platform engineering, AI, and beyond. What Developers Must Know About AI and Platform Engineering Moderated by DZone Core member and Director of Data and AI at Silk, Kellyn Pot’Vin-Gorman, panelists Ryan Murray, Sandra Borda, and Chiradeep Vittal discussed the most probing questions and deliberations facing AI and platform engineering today. 

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Viking Enterprise Solutions: Empowering Modern Data Infrastructure

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 17:08:23

In today's rapidly evolving technological landscape, developers, engineers, and architects face unprecedented challenges in managing, processing, and deriving value from vast amounts of data. Viking Enterprise Solutions (VES), a division of Sanmina Corporation, stands at the forefront of addressing these challenges with its innovative hardware and software solutions. This article explores how VES can help professionals in their roles, focusing on key areas of expertise and product offerings based on their recent presentation to the 56th IT Press Tour. Bridging Hardware and Software for Optimal Performance One of VES's core strengths lies in its ability to bridge the gap between hardware and software, creating solutions that maximize performance and efficiency. As a product division of Sanmina, a $9 billion public company, VES leverages decades of manufacturing expertise to deliver cutting-edge data center solutions.

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Interactive PDF Q&amp;A: A Retrieval-Augmented Generation Approach

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 16:08:23

In the information age, dealing with huge PDFs happens on a day-to-day basis. Most of the time, I have found myself drowning in a sea of text, struggling to find the information I wanted or needed reading page after page. But, what if I can ask questions about the PDF and recover not only the relevant information but also the page contents? That's where the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technique comes into play. By combining these cutting-edge technologies, I have created a locally hosted application that allows you to chat with your PDFs, ask questions, and receive all the necessary context.

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regreSSHion: Should We Panic About the New OpenSSH Vulnerability?

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 15:08:23

What Is the regreSSHion Vulnerability (CVE-2024-6387)? regreSSHion is a newly discovered vulnerability in OpenSSH that affects glibc-based Linux systems. regreSSHion (CVE-2024-6387) may allow arbitrary code execution with root privileges on systems with default configurations. Why Is Everyone Worried About the regreSSHion Vulnerability? Everyone is worried about the regreSSHion vulnerability because OpenSSH is a widely used utility for remote connection to different devices around the world. It implements the SSH (Secure Shell) protocol, which is integrated into most Linux distributions as well as macOS, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD. Furthermore, SSH is integrated into almost every device connected to the internet, from WiFi routers to baby monitors.

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How DevSecOps Can Combat Zero-Day Threats

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 14:08:23

Zero-day threats are becoming more dangerous than ever. Recently, bad actors have taken over the TikTok accounts of celebrities and brands through a zero-day hack. In late May to early June, reports of high-profile TikTok users losing control over their accounts started to surface after opening a direct message. The malware used for the attack was able to infect devices without the users downloading or installing anything. TikTok appeared unaware of the extent of the damage. The company’s spokesperson, Alex Haurek, said that the number of accounts compromised was “very small,” but he also declined to provide a specific number. He said they have been working with the owners of the affected accounts to restore access and that they have implemented measures to make sure the problem does not happen again.

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How To Use Metric Scorecards in Evaluating Production Readiness (And Why You Should)

Aggregated on: 2024-07-10 13:08:23

Never-ending Slack channels. Hours-long all-hands-on-deck calls. Constant alignment and realignment meetings. And after all that, releases still fail too often! Production readiness doesn’t need to be this painful for developer teams.  Metric data scorecards are a simple way to view production readiness all in one report. These scorecards provide a concise overview of the readiness status, offering a snapshot of key metrics that gauge the health of systems and applications – think of a simple dashboard with green indicators versus checking dozens of different channels.

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How To Use the H2 Database With Spring Boot

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

In this tutorial, we’ll review an example application that is written in the Groovy programming language and demonstrate how to use the H2 relational database (H2 DB/H2) with Spring Boot. The benefit of using the Groovy Programming Language, in this case, is that it allows an example to ship exactly one file which contains everything we need to run the application.

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Mastering the Art of ChatGPT: 15 Prompt Engineering Techniques

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

Imagine you’re at your favorite burger place. You walk up to the counter and say, “Food, please!” The server might give you anything from a salad to a fish sandwich — definitely not what you were craving.

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How To Build an AI Knowledge Base With RAG

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

Large Language Models are immensely powerful and can quickly generate intelligent and natural-sounding responses. Their major problem, however, is a limitation of training data – GPT-4, for instance, has a knowledge cutoff date in September 2021. This means that the model is unaware of any events or developments after this date. LLMs also have consistent troubles with the accuracy of information and “hallucinations” – coherent and logical, but factually incorrect responses. Finally, LLMs are unaware of specific, niche information, and can only generate responses on a certain level of generality.  To solve these issues and make the LLM usable for specific and information-heavy tasks, LLMs can be connected to AI knowledge bases – repositories of information that consist of organized data – product documentation, articles, messages, and other materials. In this article, I explain how to create a knowledge base that would later be connected to the LLM model and enable it to generate factually correct and specific responses. 

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Mitigate the Security Challenges of Telecom 5G IoT Microservice Pods Architecture Using Istio

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

Deploying microservices in a Kubernetes cluster is critical in 5G Telecom. However, it also introduces significant security risks. While firewall rules and proxies provide initial security, the default communication mechanisms within Kubernetes, such as unencrypted network traffic and lack of access control, are inherently insecure. This insecurity could compromise sensitive data. Therefore, implementing additional security measures within each microservice pod is not just a recommendation but a crucial step to ensure secure communication within the cluster. So, additional configuration inside each application is needed.  Istio provides a robust solution to these challenges by effectively managing communication between individual 5G telecom microservice pods. With its control plane, Istio automatically injects a sidecar proxy into individual microservices pods, ensuring secure and efficient communication.

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Securing Your Machine Identities Means Better Secrets Management

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

In 2024, GitGuardian released the State of Secrets Sprawl report. The findings speak for themselves; with over 12.7 million secrets detected in GitHub public repos, it is clear that hard-coded plaintext credentials are a serious problem. Worse yet, it is a growing problem, year over year, with 10 million found the previous year and 6 million found the year before that. These are not cumulative findings! When we dig a little deeper into these numbers, one overwhelming fact springs out: specific secrets detected, the vast majority of which are API keys, outnumber generic secrets detected in our findings by a significant margin. This makes sense when you realize that API keys are used to authenticate specific services, devices, and workloads within our applications and pipelines to enable machine-to-machine communication. This is very much in line with research from CyberArk, machine identities outnumber human identities by a factor of 45 to one. This gap is only going to widen continually as we integrate more and more services in our codebases and with ever-increasing velocity.

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Cache Wisely: How You Can Prevent Distributed System Failures

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

Caching is often implemented as a generic solution when we think about improving the latency and availability characteristics of dependency service calls. Latency improves as we avoid the need to make the network round trip to the dependency service, and availability improves as we don’t need to worry about temporary downtimes of the dependency service given that the cache serves the required response that we are looking for. It is important to note that caching does not help if our requests to a dependency service lead to a distinct response every time, or if a client makes vastly different request types with not much overlap between responses. There are also additional constraints to using caching if our service cannot tolerate stale data.  We won’t be delving into caching types, techniques, and applicability as those are covered broadly on the internet. Instead, we will focus on the less talked about risk with caching that gets ignored as systems evolve, and this puts the system at risk of a broad outage. 

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Enhancing Security With ZTNA in Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Deployments

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

Today’s network infrastructure is rapidly changing with the adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud architectures to leverage the benefits of flexibility, scalability, and redundancy. These advantages come with their own set of challenges, particularly in securing access to resources and users spread across cloud environments. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) ensures secure connectivity in diverse and complex infrastructures. Understanding ZTNA in Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Environments The Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) marks a major shift from the traditional perimeter-based security which treats traffic as untrustworthy, irrespective of its source. Network segmentation is not the only reliable method of providing security. ZTNA checks every access request based on user identity, device security posture, and contextual factors before granting access to applications and data.

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Master AWS IAM Role Configuration With Terraform

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

It's super important today to keep things secure and make sure everything is running as it should. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) helps with this by letting you manage who can get into what parts of your AWS account. One cool thing about IAM is that it lets you give permissions to different parts or people in your account without having to share sensitive info like passwords. Today, I'm going to talk about using Terraform, a tool that lets you set up infrastructure through code, to create and set up these IAM roles easily. Understanding AWS IAM Roles and Terraform Before we get into how to use Terraform for setting up IAM roles in AWS, it's key to grasp what AWS IAM roles and Terraform are all about. In your AWS account, you can create IAM roles, which are basically identities with certain permissions attached. These roles let you give specific rights to different parts of your AWS setup without any hassle. On the flip side, Terraform is a tool that lets you manage your infrastructure through code instead of doing everything manually. It’s made specifically for working smoothly with services such as those offered by AWS, thanks to the Terraform AWS provider.

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Pure Storage Empowers Developers and Data Scientists With Agile, High-Performance Storage for AI and Modern Applications

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

In the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI) and modern application development, agility and high-performance storage are crucial for success. Pure Storage, with its innovative solutions like FlashBlade and Evergreen//One for AI, is empowering developers and data scientists to accelerate their workloads and drive business value. Architecting FlashBlade for Predictable AI Performance at Scale AI and machine learning (ML) workloads demand storage that can deliver consistent, high-bandwidth performance at scale. FlashBlade, Pure Storage's unified fast file and object storage solution, is uniquely architected to meet these challenges head-on.

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Maven Archetypes: Simplifying Project Template Creation

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

With Maven Archetypes, you can create a template for your Maven projects. It is a great way to enable and apply best practices within your project or organization. In this blog, you will learn how to create archetypes from scratch and based on an existing project. Enjoy! Introduction Maven Archetypes serve as templates for creating Maven projects. Often, you will have some best practices for your organization or team on how to create Maven projects. You can describe these on an intranet or Confluence, but it is even better to create templates for it. And that is what Maven Archetypes can do for you. You can create templates from scratch or you can create a project first and generate a template from the project. And even more, it is not very complicated. So let’s get started and see how this works!

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This Is How SSL Certificates Work: HTTPS Explained in 15 Minutes

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 23:23:22

The world of online security may seem complex, but understanding the basics of how SSL certificates work and why HTTPS is essential can empower you to make safer choices online. Just like Jane, you can navigate the digital landscape with confidence, knowing that your data is protected from prying eyes. So next time you browse the web, remember the story of Jane and the coffee shop hacker and choose secure, trusted websites for your online activities. Let’s start our day with Jane who was enjoying her coffee peacefully. Chapter 1: The Coffee Shop Conundrum It was a sunny afternoon, and Jane decided to take a break from her hectic day. She headed to her favorite coffee shop, ordered a latte, and found a cozy corner to catch up on some online shopping and emails. As she settled in, she connected her laptop to the coffee shop’s free Wi-Fi and began browsing. Little did she know, a hacker named Bob was sitting just a few tables away, eager to intercept her data.

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Mastering Serverless Debugging

Aggregated on: 2024-07-09 06:23:22

Serverless computing has emerged as a transformative approach to deploying and managing applications. The theory is that by abstracting away the underlying infrastructure, developers can focus solely on writing code. While the benefits are clear—scalability, cost efficiency, and performance—debugging serverless applications presents unique challenges. This post explores effective strategies for debugging serverless applications, particularly focusing on AWS Lambda. Before I proceed I think it's important to disclose a bias: I am personally not a huge fan of Serverless or PaaS after I was burned badly by PaaS in the past. However, some smart people like Adam swear by it so I should keep an open mind.

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Writing a Simple Pulumi Provider for Airbyte

Aggregated on: 2024-07-08 22:23:22

In this quick tutorial, I will go over Pulumi by writing a very simple Provider for Airbyte. The simplified use case is as follows: I want to programmatically (Infrastructure as Code) create, update, and delete Sources, Destinations, and Connections in Airbyte instead of using the UI.

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