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Lessons Learnt from Backend Systems Development
The document outlines lessons learned from backend systems development at HotelQuickly, covering their transition from a monolithic application to microservices and the evolution of their development workflow. Key highlights include the implementation of agile methodologies, challenges faced during synchronous and asynchronous processing of hotel bookings, and the adoption of new technologies such as messaging queue systems. The presentation emphasizes the importance of agile practices, collaborative reviews, and incremental improvements in handling technical debt.
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Lessons Learnt from Backend Systems Development
- 1. Lessons Learnt from BackendSystems Development by Josef Nevoral @ HotelQuickly
- 2. About HotelQuickly ● Lastminute hotel booking ● iOS, Android and BlackBerry applications ● In 15 countries and more than 200 cities ● 2 years old ● 85+ people in company, 25+ in product team
- 3. ● 10+ yearsin software development ● In HotelQuickly for 2+ years ● Many roles in the past - Titanium, iOS, backend systems ● Currently leading backend systems development About me
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- 5. Backend systems inHQ ● 100+ repositories in github (20+ public) ● 40+ third party services integrated ● 5 programming languages o php, javascript - NodeJS, python, ruby
- 6. Lessons learnt Evolution ofour development workflow From a monolithic app to microservices Asynchronous processing
- 7. Evolution of ourdevelopment workflow Lesson #1
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- 23. From sprints toKanban
- 24. From a monolithicapp to microservices Lesson #2
- 25. Why have webuilt a monolithic app? ● fast initial development ● not enough experience with large systems ● simplicity in the beginning for DevOps
- 26. What problems dowe face? ● Huge database (250+ tables) ● A single technology stack ● Scaling ● Technical debt ● Onboarding new joiners Backend Frontend Hotels extranet Tracking Payment engine Mobile API Intranet Notifications engine Callbacks
- 27. Cut the monolithinto pieces Backend === intranet Frontend Tracking Mobile API Callbacks Notifications engine Payments engine Hotel extranet
- 28. What microservices bringus ● Single responsibility ● Free hand in technology ● Independent scaling ● Smaller chunks to digest for new joiners ● Reducing technical debt step by step New challenges
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- 31. Booking a hotel(synchronous) API request from mobile app 1. Validate offer (is hotel still available?) 2. Verify that customer is not fraud 3. Charge customer’s credit card 4. Save information about the booking 5. Generate voucher and send confirmation to user (sms, email, push notification) 6. Issue loyalty points 7. Issue referral program rewards 8. Send confirmation to hotel (email, fax) 9. Send payment to hotel (generate credit card, send email/fax) 10.Return API response to customer
- 32. Problems ● can beslow ● minor error can fail booking
- 33. Booking a hotel(asynchronous) API request from mobile app 1. Validate offer (is hotel still available?) 2. Charge customer’s credit card 3. Save informations about the booking 4. Return API response to customer Processed on background ● Verify that customer is not fraud ● Generate voucher and send confirmation to user ● Issue loyalty points ● Issue referral program rewards ● Send confirmation to hotel ● Send payment to hotel
- 34. Our solution ● Cronjobs (but it sucks) o need to keep the state using flags in database o waiting for cron (min 1 minute) ● Messaging queue system o fire and forget o highly scalable with microservices (workers) o very fast communication o Moving from Beanstalkd to AWS SQS (experimenting with RabbitMQ)
- 35. Asynchronous processing was notanswer to all our performance problems and everything 42but it helped
- 36. Key takeaways ● becomeagile o sprints / kanban o retrospectives o daily updates ● have 2 pairs of eyes for everything (not just code) ● think in microservices ● move as much as possible to background processes
- 37. ● Becoming agile- book about agile best practices ● 12factor App - methodology for building software-as-a- service apps ● Joel Spolsky test - 12 steps for better code ● codebunk.com - realtime pair coding ● queues.io - list of popular job and message queues ● Top 10 uses of queues Resources
- 38. See you atthe next HQ meetup Follow our blog - product.hotelquickly.com @hotelquickly @HQProduct josef.nevoral@hotelquickly.com