Upcoming Db2 IDUG conferences

A quick post on the upcoming Db2 conferences, organized by the International Db2 User Group (IDUG). 

• The IDUG North America "2021 NA Db2 Tech Conference" is going to be a virtual event again. It is scheduled from June 7-16, 2021. The conference agenda is already available and registration is open.
• The European IDUG conference, 2021 EMEA Db2 Tech Conference, is still slated to be an in-person event. I hope to meet you in Edinburgh, Scotland, this year in October. The conference team offers mentoring for new speakers. The submission deadline just passed, but if you are a customer with a good proposal, there might be .... 

Last, but not least, I recommend to take a look at the IDUG page with regional Db2 user groups. Some of them offer virtual events, too, and facilitating networking and exchange of information during the pandemic.

cron-like scheduling on IBM Cloud

cron-like scheduling

Some days ago I stumbled over my 2015 post "Bluemix: Simple cron-like service for my Python code". It is not just the name Bluemix which is dated. Since then, it has transformed into IBM Cloud Platform and has added serverless compute options like IBM Cloud Functions (OpenWhisk) and recently IBM Cloud Code Engine. Both of them support "eventing", event-based execution of code. And both support Python code as well as many other programming languages like Node.js, Go (Golang), PHP and more. So, what does it take to set up cron-like scheduling? Not much.

Cloud tutorial on serveless web app and eventing

A follow-up from my last post on Python decorators:

Solution architecture

Some years back, on IBM Cloud, we introduced an IBM Cloud solution tutorial for GitHub traffic analytics based on Cloud Foundry and IBM Cloud Functions. A Cloud Functions action is triggered daily to collect traffic data. The action stores the data in a Db2 database. Users can then analyse the data in a Python Flask app served by Cloud Foundry.

Today, that same solution scenario and app are still available, but they are served by IBM Cloud Code Engine. Code Engine is a fully managed, serverless platform that runs your containerized workloads, including web apps, microservices, event-driven functions or batch jobs. The slightly renamed tutorial — "Serverless web app and eventing for data retrieval and analytics" — demonstrates how the existing app can be containerized and both served as web app and and used to process the daily data collection event.

Continue reading the article on the IBM Cloud blog.

Pseudo-decorators for my Python Flask app

Secured Python Flask app on Code Engine

Recently, I migrated an existing Python app from a Cloud Foundry to an IBM Cloud Code Engine deployment. The Flask app uses decorators for the routes and for OIDC-based authentication. For usability, the app should start up even without anything configured yet and the OIDC decorators being invalid. It required to some IMHO tricky coding.

JWT token authentication in Db2 runtimes like Python or Node.js

Python script connecting to Db2 with JWT

Some weeks ago I discussed how to configure JWT-based token authentication in Db2. I set up Db2 to accept JWS identity tokens and then connected to my test database using the command line. But how do you connect from a programming language like Python or Node.js? Here is what I needed.

Great chatbots in no time

Chatbots take over customer service

Last week, I was coach again at a chatbot hackathon. Chatbots have been around for a long time and I have blogged about tips & tricks for developing chatbots and resources many times. With Covid-19 transforming the world towards more digitalization and self-service, chatbot deployments grew significantly. In this post, I want to look back at the hackathon and share some wisdom for building great chatbots.

IBM Cloud CLI: Some tips and tricks - make it a home

IBM Cloud CLI options

In the past, I have blogged several times about how to use the command line. Today, I want to share some tips and tricks for the IBM Cloud CLI (command line interface). Many of you work with the ibmcloud command, but have you ever looked into its help option? Here is a quick look at them and how to put them to good use...

Follow-up to Db2 and JWT: What is JOSE...?

JWT: Encoded or decoded security claims

Last week, I wrote about Db2 support for JSON Web Tokens (JWT). Today, I have a small follow-up with some reading material on JWT and related topics like JOSE, JWS, JWK as well as OAuth and OpenID Connect.

Some JWT history and standards

The first draft for JSON Web Tokens, JWTs, is already 10 years old. It is from December 2010. The early draft states:

Db2 Security: Configure JSON Web Token (JWT) authentication

Db2 login utilizing a JWT

Since V11.5.4, Db2 allows to consume JWT (JSON Web Token). The business case is to support SSO (single sign-on). You can configure Db2 to accept access tokens issued by external Identity Provider (IDPs), including the IBM solutions or open source projects like gluu. V11.5.5 brought some JWT improvements, e.g., support for multiple labels. On a recent Friday, I set up my Db2 Docker container to accept JWTs, not those issued by an external identity service, but my own.