At Scylla Summit 2022, I presented "FLiP Into Apache Pulsar Apps with ScyllaDB". Using the same content, in this blog, we'll demonstrate step-by-step how to build real-time messaging and streaming applications using a variety of OSS libraries, schemas, languages, frameworks, and tools utilizing ScyllaDB. We'll also introduce options from MQTT, Web Sockets, Java, Golang, Python, NodeJS, Apache NiFi, Kafka on Pulsar, Pulsar protocol, and more. You will learn how to quickly deploy an app to a production cloud cluster with StreamNative, and build your own fast applications using the Apache Pulsar and Scylla integration.
Before we jump into the how, let's review why this integration can be used for a speedy application build. Scylla is an ultra-fast, low-latency, high-throughput, open-source NoSQL platform that is fully compatible with Cassandra. Populating Scylla tables utilizing the Scylla-compatible Pulsar IO sink doesn't require any complex or specialized coding, and the sink makes it easy to load data to Scylla using a simple configuration file pointing to Pulsar topics that stream all events directly to Scylla tables.
The Real-time Web: Evolution of the User Experience
Over the last few years, companies have used real-time updates to add new experiences and features and increase their market share.
It's now standard to expect a page within an app or browser to update parts of itself without forcing it to refresh. For example, a news page of live sports scores updates with the latest goal scored, or an app shows a change as you track your taxi on a map.
How to Use WebSockets with AWS Serverless
In this guide, we are going to see how we can use WebSockets using an AWS serverless framework with NodeJs. At the end of this guide, we will have an application where we can create a chat room and other users can join our room to chat with each other in a custom room. I made the procedure very simple to follow, and at the end of this post, you will also get a link to the Github repository for the code.
Project Setup
The first thing is to set up the project folder and install the required project dependencies by creating a new folder and running the below commands in the root of the project folder.
What the Heck Are WebSockets!?
We are knee deep into the real-time world by this point with so many applications working with live data. It’s high time there was an explanation of all the events leading up to this point in a technological stance. So, here goes…
These days, applications are moving from utilizing stale data from a database or data that’s created on-the-fly following an event trigger in a live experience that follows real-world events. The first thing we think of when it comes to real-time applications is WebSockets. But, in spite of a lot of people constantly tossing around this term in technological circles, there actually seems to be huge misconceptions associated with its meaning and working.
Scalable Client-Server Communication With WebSockets and Spring Boot (Part II)
Secure WebSockets over SSL/TLS
To prevent man-in-the-middle attacks between server and client, it is strongly recommended to use the WSS protocol, to send encrypted TCP messages. This is the equivalent of using HTTPS instead of HTTP.
Setting up NGINX
We will use NGNIX as a reverse proxy that forwards all incoming requests to the Spring Gateway MS. We will configure the proxy to listen to port 443 which is the default port for secure connections in both HTTPS/WSS.
Full-Duplex Scalable Client-Server Communication with WebSockets and Spring Boot (Part I)
Introduction
In this article, we will be covering the steps to create a Java WebSocket server, powered by Spring Boot, that communicates with Java clients and supports load balancing across multiple instances. We’ll start by describing a use case scenario, analyzing the requirements, and then we’ll proceed to choose the technology stack that suits the case. We’ll implement the code, and finally test the application to get some performance and durability benchmarks.
Use Case: A Smart Home
The first thought we had when writing this, was to go with the classic demonstration of WebSockets usage that is the chat application. But if you were to search the internet about WebSocket examples, 99% of them are about chat apps. So we needed to come up with another idea, one that would be more fascinating and relevant to today’s technology, and would cover both point-to-point communication, as well as one-to-many broadcasting. And that is a smart home device network.
WebSockets vs. Long Polling
Sometimes we need information from our servers as soon as it’s available. The usual AJAX request/response we’re all used to doesn’t keep the connection open for this sort of use case. Instead, we need a push-based method like WebSockets, long polling, server-sent events (SSE), or, the more recently created, HTTP2 push. In this article, we compare two methods: WebSockets and long polling.
An Overview of Long Polling
In 1995, Netscape Communications hired Brendan Eich to implement scripting capabilities in Netscape Navigator and, over a ten-day period, the JavaScript language was born. Its capabilities as a language were initially very limited compared to modern-day JavaScript, and its ability to interact with the browser’s document object model (DOM) was even more limited. JavaScript was mostly useful for providing limited enhancements to enrich document consumption capabilities. For example, in-browser form validation and lightweight insertion of dynamic HTML into an existing document.