lecture

A programmatic introduction to Neo4j

There's been substantial interest in recent years in exploring data storage technology that defies the relational model orthodoxy. Many so-called NoSQL databases have grown in this space, each of tackles problems as diverse as scalability, availability, fault tolerance, and semantic richness. In this talk, I'll provide a brief background on the NoSQL landscape, and a deeper introduction to my latest project Neo4j. Neo4j is an open source graph database which efficiently persists data in nodes and relationships and is optimised for extremely fast traversals, providing superior insight into data than is easily possible in traditional relational databases (or the semantically poorer category of NoSQL databases). The bulk of this talk will be in code, where we'll see plenty of examples of how to write systems against Neo4j, starting with a simple social Web example.

Revisiting SOA for the 21st Century

In this talk, we'll explore the role of commodity HTTP middleware in building REST-ish Service-Oriented systems at large scale using agile and devops-friendly techniques. We'll think about the architectural and cost fallacies of traditional middleware and see how F/OSS solutions can be used to deliver massively available and scalable solutions. To demonstrate, we'll cover two case studies building real systems in production and compare them with the cost/benefits of using vendor-proprietary middleware, which makes traditional SOA vendors look like an expensive and risky option!