Foxx CLI – Managing Microservices

Anyone who has ever worked with our JavaScript framework Foxx was faced at some point with the challenge to install its Foxx service in its current ArangoDB instance or to replace the installed service with local code changes. This is not a big deal and can easily be done through ArangoDB’s WebUI. However, we developers always want to become more productive and clicking through a graphical UI is not the best way. Furthermore, this procedure is almost impossible to use in an automated deployment process. That’s why we decided to develop a node-based CLI tool to manage Foxx services, called Foxx-CLI, which we already released in version 1.1.

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Auto-Generate GraphQL for ArangoDB

Currently, querying ArangoDB with GraphQL requires building a GraphQL.js schema. This is tedious and the resulting JavaScript schema file can be long and bulky. Here we will demonstrate a short proof of concept that reduces the user related part to only defining the GraphQL IDL file and simple AQL queries.

The Apollo GraphQL project built a library that takes a GraphQL IDL and resolver functions to build a GraphQL.js schema. Resolve functions are called by GraphQL to get the actual data from the database. I modified the library in the way that before the resolvers are added, I read the IDL AST and create resolver functions. Read more

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A geo demonstration using Foxx

Geo data is getting more and more important for today’s applications. The growing number of location-aware services, IoT applications and other solutions using latitude and longitude ask for precise and fast processing of geo data.

Let me show you in this quick demonstration how you can use geo functions and visualize your data using Foxx and leaflet.js. Read more

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Pronto Move Shard

In July Adobe announced that they plan the End-of-Life for flash at around 2020.
As HTML5 progressed and due to a long history of critical security vulnerabilities this is – technologically speaking – certainly the right decision. However I tended to also become a bit sad.

Flash was the first technology that brought interactivity to the web. We tend to forget how static the web was in the early 2000s. Flash brought life to the web and there were plenty of stupid trash games and animations which I really enjoyed at the time. As a homage to the age of trashy flash games I created a game which resembles the games of this era: Read more

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ArangoDB 3.2 GA
RocksDB, Pregel, Fault-Tolerant Foxx & Satellite Collections

We are pleased to announce the release of ArangoDB 3.2. Get it here. After an unusually long hackathon, we eliminated two large roadblocks, added a long overdue feature and integrated an interesting new one into this release. Furthermore, we’re proud to report that we increased performance of ArangoDB on average by 35%, while at the same time reduced the memory footprint compared to version 3.1. In combination with a greatly improved cluster management, we think ArangoDB 3.2 is by far our best work. (see release notes for more details)

One key goal of ArangoDB has always been to provide a rock solid platform for building ideas. Our users should always feel safe to try new things with minimal effort by relying on ArangoDB. Todays 3.2 release is an important milestone towards this goal. We’re excited to release such an outstanding product today. Read more

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Updated GraphQL Sync in ArangoDB 3.2

Just in time for the upcoming 3.2.0 release, we have updated the graphql-sync module for compatibility with graphql-js versions 0.7.2, 0.8.2, 0.9.6 and 0.10.1. The graphql-sync module allows developers to implement GraphQL backends and schemas in strictly synchronous JavaScript environments like the ArangoDB Foxx framework by providing a thin wrapper around the official GraphQL implementation for JavaScript.

As a long-term database solution, ArangoDB is committed to API stability and avoids upgrades to third-party dependencies that would result in breaking changes. This means ArangoDB will continue to bundle the graphql-js 0.6.2 compatibility version of graphql-sync.

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ArangoDB 3.2 beta release:
Pluggable Storage Engine with RocksDB, Distributed Graph Processing and a ClusterFoxx

We’re excited to release today the beta of ArangoDB 3.2. It’s feature rich, well tested and hopefully plenty of fun for all of you. Keen to take it for a spin? Get ArangoDB 3.2 beta here.

With ArangoDB 3.2, we’re introducing the long-awaited pluggable storage engine and its first new citizen, RocksDB from Facebook

  • RocksDB: You can now use as much data in ArangoDB as you can fit on your disk. Plus, you can enjoy performance boosts on writes by having only document-level locks (more info below).
  • Pregel: Furthermore, we implemented distributed graph processing with Pregel for discovering hidden patterns, identify communities and perform in-depth analytics of large graph data sets.
  • ClusterFoxx: Another important upgrade is what we internally and playfully call the ClusterFoxx. The Foxx management internals have been rewritten from the ground up to make sure multi-coordinator cluster setups always keep their services in sync and new coordinators are fully initialised even when all existing coordinators are unavailable.
  • Enterprise: Working with some of our largest customers, we’ve added further security and scalability features to ArangoDB Enterprise like LDAP integration, Encryption at Rest, and the brand new Satellite Collections.

The goal of the whole ArangoDB 3 release cycle has been to scale the multi-model idea to new heights. Getting ‘ready’ for large scale applications is not done overnight and it’s definitely not possible without the help of a strong community. We’d like to invite all of you to lend us a helping hand to make ArangoDB 3.2 the best release ever. Please push this beta to its limits: test it for your use cases and compare the performance of the new features like RocksDB. Let us know on Github any bug that you find. Don’t worry about hurting our feelings: we want to fix any problems.

Join the Beta Bug Hunt Challenge and win a $200 Amazon Gift Card as first prize. You can find more details about this reward program at the end of this post. Read more

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ArangoDB #FoxxChallenge

The Challenge

arangodb-foxx-logoStarting today we launch the ArangoDB #FoxxChallenge and the winner will receive a brand new Amazon Echo.

Use your knowledge about everyday needs in projects and create a Foxx service that could be helpful for others. If you need some inspiration here some ideas: Read more

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How to model customer surveys in a graph database

Use-Case

The graph database use-case we are stepping through in this post is the following: In our web application we have several places where a user is led through a survey, where she decides on details for one of our products. Some of the options within the survey depend on previous decisions and some are independent.

Examples:

  • Configure a new car
  • Configure a new laptop
  • Book extras with your flight (meal, reserve seat etc.)
  • Configure a new complete kitchen
  • Collect customer feedback via logic-jump surveys

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Using GraphQL with NoSQL database ArangoDB

GraphQL is a query language created by Facebook for modern web and mobile applications as an alternative to REST APIs. Following the original announcement alongside Relay, Facebook has published an official specification and reference implementation in JavaScript. Recently projects outside Facebook like Meteor have also begun to embrace GraphQL.
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