Platform Engineering

Running your Postgres on a VM— Configuration changes for Resiliency

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash The purpose of this article is to highlight certain configurations that you might need in case you want to run your own postgresql. There is a slight difference between running it locally and deploying postgres in production. Therefore, I decided to write down the configurations that one needs to change in order to get it up and running. I will attach some code towards the end I want to run postgres on Docker (or compose), will this article be helpful?...

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Building a Smart Campus with Custom-Built Platform Engineering and IoT Solutions

The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) is a national education institution committed to the equitable, sustainable and efficient transformation of Indian settlements. One of the key motivations driving this transformation is to demonstrate a campus that incorporates all levels of sustainability in keeping with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. To bring this vision to life, IIHS chose to partner with us to design a purpose-built solution leveraging platform engineering and IoT for its Kengeri Campus that would serve as...

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Transforming Out-of-Home Advertising with State-of-the-art Products

Talon, a specialist Out-of-Home (OOH) agency, embarked on a digital transformation journey in partnership with Sahaj, aiming to re-imagine OOH by utilizing technology to not just automate, simplify and optimise outcomes but also incorporate cutting-edge technologies to make the medium attributable. Three purpose-built platforms emerged from this collaborative journey: Plato revolutionizes OOH inventory management by aggregating paper and digital inventory across multiple markets into a single intuitive campaign planning and delivery system. It allows users to explore, plan, check availability,...

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Implementing Authentication in Next.js v13 Application with Keycloak(Part — 2)

In the last article, I have discussed about bootrsapping keycloak server along with a basic setup of nextjs with next-auth. In this subsequent article, our focus will shift to configuring next-auth to enhance the user experience while keeping a security-first approach. A. Bootstrapping keycloak server B. Setting up nextjs along with next-auth C. Refreshing access tokens D. Federated logout E. Securing pages with middleware F. Customising sign in and sign out routes (A & B was discussed in the last part, we will discuss C–F in this part) By default next-auth uses JWT session strategy....

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Implementing Authentication in Next.js v13 Application with Keycloak(Part — 1)

Authentication and authorization are the digital gatekeepers of a web app, playing pivotal roles in ensuring a secure and controlled user experience. One such tool which can help us do this task for us is Keycloak. Keycloak is an open-source Identity and Access Management (IAM) tool that handles authentication and authorisation of applications. It acts as an identity broker, allowing users to authenticate with their preferred identity provider and apply different authorisation mechanisms, such as role-based or attribute-based. This article will...

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Streamlining GitHub Actions Testing with Act

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash In the ever-evolving landscape of software development, efficiency in testing and validating workflows is crucial. “Act” is a powerful tool designed to enhance and streamline the testing process within GitHub Actions. This tool is not only a time-saver but also a facilitator for a smoother and more reliable CI/CD pipeline. Think globally act locally — Act allows developers to run GitHub Actions workflows locally on their machines. This feature is invaluable for rapid iteration and debugging before...

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A Practical Guide to using Advisory Locks in your Application

Databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL provide various locking mechanisms to control concurrency and to avoid data corruption. We looked at different locks in a previous blog and in that I briefly covered advisory locks. In this blog let’s take a deep dive into it. We will implement the locks on the database and see how they work. I have also provided the code implementation for it in Java so that you can use it in your applications. Advisory locks are locks provided...

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Revolutionizing a Leading Automotive Giant's Digital Ecosystem through Innovation and Data-Led Strategies

In the pursuit of continuous improvement and industry transformation, we partnered with a leading automotive giant on a journey to modernise its digital ecosystem. This endeavour aimed to not only enhance the core products and technologies but also stimulate innovation, scale operations and instil data-led strategies at the heart of its operations. The purpose-built Extensible Data Platform revolutionizes the post-purchase usage lifecycle of vehicles. It facilitates real-time vehicle health and telemetry data, efficient fleet and trip management, tracking, safety alerts...

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Sahaj & Citizens of The Great Barrier Reef: The Next Chapter of Scale, Complexity & Collaboration for Conservation

The Great Barrier Reef, Australia’s iconic ecological site and the world’s largest marine ecosystem is buckling under the effects of climate change and other factors. According to a report published by government scientists, the natural landmark suffered its sixth mass bleaching event in 2022 with 91% of reefs affected by coral bleaching. Driven by this sentiment, Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef entered the fray to gather data about the reef for scientists to analyse it and find solutions. Its...

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A practical guide to implementing sensitive data encryption using Postgres Pgcrypto

In the previous blog, we discussed the importance of securing PII and sensitive data points captured by enterprises as part of their business apps, analyzed different techniques of securing these data points namely, Encryption and Tokenization, and finally, compared these different techniques. Continuing in this blog series, we will now cover the database-side encryption technique of sensitive data with Spring Boot and Hibernate Technologies. Information on this topic is limited, incomplete and fragmented across different websites, documentation, and blogs. This blog...

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