Software Architecture and System Design News
Latest curated articles from top engineering blogs
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Context Window Optimization for AI Agents with Code Mode
Cloudflare's Code Mode addresses the challenge of large context window consumption in AI agents interacting with vast APIs. By enabling agents to write and execute code against a typed SDK and API specification, it drastically reduces token usage, offering a more efficient and scalable way for agents to discover and utilize API functionalities. This approach leverages a server-side execution environment for enhanced security and fixed token cost, regardless of API size.
Key Architecture Decisions for Backend Tech Leads
This article outlines seven crucial architecture decisions backend tech leads should regularly re-evaluate. It covers topics from API design and data storage choices to scaling strategies and infrastructure considerations, emphasizing the importance of aligning technical decisions with business goals and long-term maintainability.
Dependency Injection for Scalable and Maintainable Systems
This article explores Dependency Injection (DI) as a crucial technique for building scalable and maintainable large-scale applications, directly addressing the Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP). It highlights how proper DI goes beyond object creation, significantly impacting performance through careful lifecycle management and reducing memory pressure from excessive object instantiations. Understanding DI is key for designing modular and testable software architectures.
Designing Fine-Grained API Authorization with AWS Verified Permissions
This article details how Convera implemented a fine-grained API authorization system using Amazon Verified Permissions for their global cross-border payments platform. It highlights the architecture, policy definition using Cedar language, and integration with AWS services like Cognito and API Gateway to enforce attribute-based and role-based access control for both customer-facing and internal applications, as well as service-to-service communication.
Integrating Swagger UI with Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) Architectures
This article addresses the architectural challenge of integrating Swagger UI with modern Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) architectures that prioritize security by avoiding tokens in the browser. It introduces a Swagger UI plugin designed to enable native communication with the BFF, respecting HTTP sessions, HttpOnly cookies, and CSRF protection, thus allowing Swagger UI to function as a first-class frontend client without compromising security.
Building a Flexible and Scalable Billing System: Lessons from Stripe's Acquisition of Metronome
Stripe's acquisition of Metronome aims to enhance its billing platform, particularly for complex usage-based models, by integrating Metronome's capabilities. This move highlights the architectural challenges in designing flexible monetization infrastructure that can support diverse business models, from simple subscriptions to multi-dimensional metering and sales-led contracts at global scale. The integration focuses on creating a unified platform for payments, analytics, revenue recognition, and tax, emphasizing system consolidation and extensibility.
Designing Reliable Event-Driven Automations: Beyond Naive Triggers
This article discusses common pitfalls in building real-world automations, particularly the unreliability caused by naive event-driven triggers. It advocates for a "controlled activation model" to manage timing and data consistency, treating reports as deliberate system artifacts rather than immediate reactions to individual events. The piece also highlights the importance of structured AI output and effective delivery channels for operational trust.
Viaduct Modernization: Evolving Airbnb's Data-Oriented Service Mesh Architecture
Airbnb's Viaduct, a data-oriented service mesh, has undergone significant modernization to address architectural integrity and developer experience challenges. This evolution involved simplifying its API, formalizing modularity, and re-architecting its internal engine to improve performance, maintainability, and scalability while supporting gradual migration. The article details the shift from a reactive, bottom-up approach to a more principled, layered design.
Airbnb's Viaduct: A Data-Oriented Service Mesh for SOA Modularity
This article introduces Viaduct, Airbnb's data-oriented service mesh designed to improve modularity in large microservices-based Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). It addresses the 'spaghetti SOA' problem by shifting from procedure-oriented service meshes to a data-centric approach using GraphQL, abstracting service dependencies and simplifying data access and updates across a complex ecosystem.
Designing Hierarchical Issue Management: GitHub's Sub-Issues Implementation
This article details GitHub's journey in building sub-issues, a feature enhancing complex issue management by introducing hierarchical task structures. It covers the data modeling approach using MySQL relationships, exposure via GraphQL, and the benefits of integrating deeply with existing GitHub components to support nested tasks and track progress efficiently. The design emphasizes simplicity, performance, and reusability.
Cross-Device Passkey Authentication for Screenless Devices
This article from Meta Engineering details a novel system design for enabling cross-device passkey authentication on devices lacking traditional displays, such as XR headsets, IoT devices, and smart home hubs. It outlines an architecture that bypasses QR codes by leveraging a companion mobile application and existing FIDO CTAP hybrid protocols to securely transfer authentication requests and facilitate user verification, thereby extending passwordless security to a wider ecosystem.
Building an AI Gateway for Amazon Bedrock with AWS API Gateway
This article details a reference architecture for an AI gateway using Amazon API Gateway to control access to Amazon Bedrock. The design focuses on implementing critical enterprise governance features like authorization, quota management, tenant isolation, and cost control for generative AI applications. It leverages managed AWS services to provide a scalable and transparent solution for integrating foundation models.