Off-by-none: Issue #252

October 24, 2023

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Customize your Code Completion 🤖

In our previous issue, OpenSearch added Pipelines, CloudWatch helped you set alarms, and Ampt added support for Next.js 13.5. This week, CodeWhisperer gets customizable, Werner apologizes, and Ampt adds new AI capabilities. Plus, we have plenty of serverless content from the community!

Serverless News & Announcements 📣

Another relatively quiet serverless week at AWS. They did introduce Amazon CodeWhisperer customization capability, in Preview (more details here). Being able to offer code completion recommendations based off of your own private, internal code repositories was the logical next step, and it looks like that’s where AWS is going.

In other AWS news, Werner Vogels personally apologized to Raphael Manke and Luc van Donkersgoed for the takedown notices they received from AWS. They build some pretty spectacular re:Invent session catalogs/tools that supposedly violated AWS’s terms and conditions. Corey Quinn summed up the situation pretty well, and ultimately, the decision was rightly reversed. Too little, too late unfortunately.

In some other news, Ran Isenberg announced that AWS Lambda Handler Cookbook 4.2.0 is now available and Ternary, a cloud spend management startup, raises $12M, proving that people are still concerned about controlling costs in the cloud.

Finally, Ampt launched an AI module that exposes interfaces to Amazon Bedrock, letting you use Generative AI in just a few lines of code. It’s in beta and limited to only a few foundational models and account levels at this point, but coverage will be expanding quickly, so stay tuned!

Serverless Concepts 🏗

Single table design for DynamoDB: The reality
Pete Naylor outlines all the reasons why Single Table Design in DynamoDB might not be all that you think it is. He’s quite right about the value being misunderstood, which I dive into more detail about here.

Implementing the Transactional Outbox Pattern for Serverless Domain Events
Elias Brange advocates for using this EDA pattern to ensure events get properly sent, but I have a few concerns about thinking it’s a silver bullet. Introducing an additional table and requiring transaction can significantly increase costs. Plus, it adds a lot of complexity that might not be needed. I think it’s quite possible (and simpler) to orchestrate your events off domain specific data changes on a DynamoDB stream.

Amazon DevOps Guru for the Serverless applications – Part 4 Anomaly Detection on API Gateway
I’m enjoying these posts from Vadym Kazulkin. Very interesting.

Stop using AWS Lambda for everything!
Rahul Ladumor outlines some benefits and pitfalls of Lambda, ECS, and EKS.

WebSockets, gRPC, MQTT, and SSE – Which Real-Time Notification Method Is For You?
Allen Helton educates you on the different real-time notification methods and helps you decide when they are a good fit.

Serverless Tutorials 👷‍♀️

Amplify: how to share code without Lambda Layers or private NPM
Yan Cui has another interesting post that shows you how to leverage a feature of Amplify to use symlinks to share code across functions.

Generating Mermaid Syntax Diagrams with AI-powered Amazon Bedrock
This post by Lee Gilmore is 🔥! He demonstrates how AI-driven Mermaid syntax diagrams have the potential to redefine how teams visualize and execute their work.

And here are several more really great tutorials:

• How to handle unmatched routes with serverless by Anjan Talatam
• CDK Escape Hatches + How to Export CDK to CloudFormation by Marko
• Serverless Simplicity: Deploy & Run your Node.js Framework App on AWS Lambda by Jimmy
• Building WebSocket APIs with AWS API Gateway and CDK by Sidath Munasinghe
• Bedrock unveiled: Indexing own data to OpenSearch Serverless via a Lambda by Antonio Lagrotteria
• Integrating AWS Elasticache Redis with AWS Lambda using Serverless Framework and CloudFormation by Muhammad Shariq
• How to Effortlessly Monitor Serverless Applications with CloudWatch – Part One by Ran Isenberg
• Dynamic Image Resizing and Formatting with AWS Lambda@Edge and Sharp by Shivam Garg
• Step Functions distributed map and cross account S3 access by Zied Ben Tahar
• Local Development with AWS Lambda and NestJS: Docker Debugging and Hot Reload by Venya Brodetskiy

Serverless Reads 🤓

Transitioning to TypeScript: How We Optimized Serverless Development at November Five
Understanding a team’s decision making process can be very insightful and potentially help your team with the process as well.

Serverless Challenge – Is scaling achievable using Redis as a cache-aside pattern?
Daniele Frasca follows up on his previous post about not using a cache-aside pattern and is faced with the age-old question of over-provisioning.

Software Platform Engineering Will Elevate Workflows
This isn’t about serverless per se, but Adrian Bridgwater published another article in a long list of articles talking about the future of “platform engineering.” There are reasons to embrace it and reasons to reject it, but how serverless fits into this whole idea is a complex conversation.

Podcasts, Videos, and more 🎧

Real-World Serverless podcast – Episode #85
Yan Cui discusses CDK Dos and Don’ts with Matthew Bonig, an AWS DevTools Hero and co-author of The CDK Book.

Ready, Set, Cloud Podcast! – Episode #21
Allen Helton chats with Cliff Crosland about how Scanner built an ultra-fast serverless data lake.

Super serverless tools with Lars Jacobsson | Serverless Office Hours
AWS Community Builder, Lars Jacobsson, joins Dave Boyne to show samp-cli, a CLI tool that takes your AWS SAM development to the next level.

AWS Bites 100. Exploring Ampt, a new way to build cloud apps on AWS
Eoin and Luciano discuss Ampt, which they describe as “a groundbreaking solution that simplifies the intricate landscape of AWS application development, allowing you to direct your focus toward the very essence of your applications, unhindered by the burdens of infrastructure management.” 😉

New from AWS 🆕

Here are some other AWS announcements you may have missed:

• AWS announces member account level credit sharing preferences
• Amazon MSK announces Amazon EventBridge Pipes console integration
• Amazon ECS increases applications resiliency to unpredictable load spikes
• Amazon MSK announces MSK Replicator for cross-region and same-region streaming data replication
• Enable Amazon RDS Optimized Writes using RDS Blue/Green Deployments
• AWS announces Amazon Redshift integration with Visual Studio Code
• AWS re:Post introduces Selections
• Amazon Redshift announces integration with AWS Secrets Manager
• Amazon Bedrock now available in Europe (Frankfurt) AWS Region
• Amazon Route 53 traffic flow now supports geoproximity routing for AWS Local Zones

Upcoming Serverless Events 🗓

October 26, 2023 – EDA Day Nashville

October 26, 2023 – Serverless Summit Hamburg

October 26, 2023 – Diving Deep into the Anatomy of a Momento Vector Index powered Langchain Chatbot (webinar)

November 27 – December 1, 2023 – AWS re:Invent 2023

Serverless Star of the Week ⭐️

This week’s star is Amo Moloko (@PrinceAshburton). Amo is a full stack engineer and Engineering Manager at Tripplo building some really exciting services with serverless. Based in Cape Town, South Africa, he’s been starting to speak at conferences and share his knowledge with others in the community. He was a speaker at ServerlessDays Cape Town, sharing his experience migrating applications from the Serverless Framework to the CDK. It was great to meet him, and his passion for helping others learn serverless is just what this community needs.

Final Thoughts 🤔

I spent the last several days in Cape Town, South Africa for the ServerlessDays Cape Town conference and it was amazing. Yes, I did climb a mountain, got to watch the Springboks beat England in the Rugby World Cup, and of course, enjoy an awesome ServerlessDays conference. Thanks again to the team at Aleios for organizing the event. It was such an honor to be invited and meet so many great people in the South African serverless community. Glad to be home, but the trip was unforgettable!

Until next week,
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 X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, or email.