Off-by-none: Issue #172

January 18, 2022

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Happy 10th Birthday to DynamoDB! 🎉

Welcome to Issue #172 of Off-by-none. This issue is sponsored by our friends at Upstash.

Last week, a rogue open-source project broke the AWS-CDK, Typescript Lambdas got some powertools, and everyone was talking about “dynamic crons.” This week, DynamoDB turns 10, Eleventy 1.0 launches with a serverless plugin, and we ask if 2022 is the year of low-code. Plus we’ve got lots of serverless content from the community.

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Serverless News & Announcements 📣

The biggest news from AWS this week might just be the new Console Home in AWS Management Console. I will say this, it’s much better than what used to be there.

In other AWS related news, Orca Security posted some details about the Superglue and BreakingFormation vulnerabilities they discovered (and responsibly reported) in AWS Glue and AWS CloudFormation.

Some other cloud platforms are making noise as well. HashiCorp Waypoint added triggers and external data fetching, Cloudflare Workers released an optimization that reduces your bill, DataStax enabled a gRPC API for Cassandra and Webscale launched CloudEDGE CDN to “dramatically improve core web vitals for commerce.”

Prancer Enterprise announced the release of a Penetration Testing as Code Framework (PAC). I’m not familiar with this company, but I like anything that makes developers more aware (and vigilant) of app security.

Also, I’ve mentioned The State of Cloud Native Development report before, which claims serverless usage is declining. The data is a year old at this point, but here it is if you want to read it.

Zac Charles launched a professional VTL editor and debugger, which looks pretty cool. I can only hope that AWS makes this obsolete by moving away from VTL and implementing JavaScript transformers instead.

David Boyne created an Awesome EventBridge repo that shares a bunch of resources and tools.

And finally, Eleventy 1.0 launched with the Serverless Plugin, which I absolutely LOVE! I’ve been using Eleventy as my go-to SSG for quite some time, and while the new Serverless Plugin isn’t perfect, it is a huge step forward.

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Since it’s DynamoDB’s birthday, we’ll give it a little extra attention today. 😉

Haiko van der Schaaf explains why serverless and DynamoDB are a perfect fit, Wojciech Matuszewski tries to implement DynamoDB single-table design with AWS Step Functions, and Lee James Gilmore shares more serverless caching strategies, this time focusing on Amazon DynamoDB DAX.

Also, Luc van Donkersgoed shared a solution for reliably auto-incrementing integers in DynamoDB. It works, but I think there is a better way.

Paul Swail asks (and answers), “When should I add caching to my serverless API?“, Taavi Rehemägi shares a great infographic on all you need to know about AWS API Gateway and resolving the most common requests, and Maxi Ferreira explains password protection for Cloudflare Pages.

And speaking of Cloudflare Pages, I found this interesting post that compares them to Netlify. Lots of options in the JAMstack space, and they’re all getting better.

Maurice Borgmeier shares some interesting news that Lambda SQS Event Filters may delete your messages if you’re not careful.

Finally, Cem Altuner gives an overview of LocalStack and the pros and cons of running AWS on your laptop. SAM Accelerate, Serverless Cloud, and others are trying to make it easier to test in the cloud, but I still get that for many, local solutions are the best option. 😐

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

We have two great Serverless Cloud tutorials, including this awesome one from Eslam Hefnawy that shows you how to building an image hosting app on Serverless Cloud, plus one from Ben Miner explaining how to build an async CSV parser using Serverless Storage’s eventing system.

Max Rohde teaches you how to build a TypeScript serverless API on AWS using Terraform, Mohammad Faisal helps you create your first AWS CDK app to understand its power, and Ankit Aabad gives you some options for asynchronously invoking Lambda Functions from another Lambda.

Matt Martz takes a swing at functionless and shows you how to convert a Lambda to a Step Function, Maurice Borgmeier explains how to simplify your code and save money with Lambda Event Filters, and Maxine Meurer details how to update a DynamoDB item using NodeJS with AWS Lambda and Amplify CLI.

There were two interesting DevOps use cases, including one on performing AWS IAM Access key rotation using Lambda function, plus this one from Katherine Cisneros on replicating SSM parameters to another region using AWS Lambda & SQS.

Danielle Heberling shows you how to upgrade to CDK v2 for Typescript.

And for a little fun, Lizzie Siegle shows us how to build a Wordle-like SMS game with Twilio Serverless in JavaScript. Who doesn’t love a good Wordle?

Serverless Reads 🤓

Mark Hinkle gives an interesting overview of DevOps, Pandemics and 2022’s Cloud-y Future.

Joe McKendrick explains that a busy year is ahead in low-code and no-code development and perhaps it’s not just for “citizen” developers.

Priyanka Vergadia shares her perspective on serverless vs fully managed offerings. And there are pandas. 🐼

Igor Anic explains why local development is not the right choice for the cloud serverless world. I would have to agree.

Travis Bale outlines the benefits of using a Custom Runtime for Go-Based Lambda Functions.

Frédéric Barthelet opines on how serverless can benefit from not being so Lambda-centric, that is to say, stop writing unnecessary code.

Andrew JR attempts to clear up some misunderstandings of serverless on AWS.

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

Marcia Villalba’s latest video discusses AWS Amplify Studio and its support for importing Figma designs and converting them to React components.

The Serverless Craic team asks, “What is the Operational Excellence Pillar for Well Architected?”

New from AWS 🆕

Not much from AWS this week, but now DynamoDB can finally return the throughput capacity consumed by PartiQL API calls. I never understood why this wasn’t part of the original implementation. Now if they just add UPSERTS, it might actually be usable.

Also, AWS AppSync now supports cache entry eviction for server-side data caching.

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

If you have an event, webinar, etc. that you’d like me to mention, please email me.

January 26, 2022 – AWS Startup Showcase Season 2 Episode 1 | Open Cloud Innovations

Serverless Star of the Week ⭐️

There is a very long list of people who are doing #ServerlessGood and contributing to the Serverless community. These people deserve recognition for their efforts. So each week, I will mention someone whose recent contribution really stood out to me. I love meeting new people, so if you know someone who deserves recognition, please nominate them.

This week’s star is Brian Scanlan (@brian_scanlan). Brain is the Principal Systems Engineer at Intercom where he leads their developer infrastructure efforts, helping teams make products resilient to failure, scalable to customers’ needs and need little to no human intervention to work well. Brian has previously held posts with HEAnet and Amazon, and has experience helping teams build their technical strategies, as well as designing and implementing solutions. Brian is a frequent contributor to Intercom’s engineering blog, has been a guest on Serverless Chats, and has presented at LeadDev Con in London, Turing Fest, and Dash by Datadog. Thanks, Brian, for your contributions!

Final Thoughts 🤔

Happy birthday again to DynamoDB. It really is a great solution if your database needs help! Also, don’t forget to sign up for my upcoming DynamoDB modeling course, you won’t regret it. 😉

Until next time,
Jeremy

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter. We’re always looking for ideas and feedback to make it better and more inclusive, so please feel free to reach out to me via Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, or email.