Notes on software, architecture, and the details that make systems work. Written from experience, shared for the next build.
A comprehensive implementation guide to API key and HMAC signature authentication — covering API key generation and storage, HMAC request signing inspired by AWS Signature V4, Node.js implementation, rate limiting, and key rotation strategies.
A comprehensive implementation guide to Mutual TLS (mTLS) for service-to-service authentication — covering certificate chains, CA setup, certificate rotation, Node.js and Go implementations, Kubernetes cert-manager integration, and production patterns.
A high-level comparison of five authentication patterns for service-to-service communication — mTLS, API Keys & HMAC, OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials, Service Mesh Identity (SPIFFE/SPIRE), and JWT — covering when to use each, trade-offs, and real-world examples.
A comprehensive guide to WebSocket and Server-Sent Events for real-time communication — covering the WebSocket protocol, SSE, scaling persistent connections, heartbeats, reconnection, and production patterns.
A comprehensive guide to GraphQL Federation for server-to-server communication — covering schema composition, subgraph design, entity resolution, the gateway router, performance optimization, and production deployment.
A comprehensive guide to event streaming with Apache Kafka — covering topics, partitions, consumer groups, exactly-once semantics, Schema Registry, Kafka Streams, and production deployment patterns.
A comprehensive guide to message queues for server-to-server communication — covering RabbitMQ, Amazon SQS, delivery guarantees, dead-letter queues, backpressure, and production patterns.
A comprehensive guide to gRPC for server-to-server communication — covering Protocol Buffers, service definitions, streaming patterns, interceptors, error handling, load balancing, and production deployment.
A comprehensive guide to REST API for server-to-server communication — covering API design principles, HTTP semantics, authentication patterns, error handling, rate limiting, circuit breakers, and production best practices.
A high-level comparison of server-to-server communication patterns — REST, gRPC, Message Queues, Event Streaming, GraphQL Federation, and WebSocket/SSE — covering when to use each, trade-offs, and real-world use cases.
