A little bit of everything from Al Brownhttps://alasdairb.com/https://alasdairb.com/posts/200-conversation-at-kafka-summit/https://alasdairb.com/posts/200-conversation-at-kafka-summit/I spent 2 long days at Kafka Summit 2024 and spoke with over 200 practitioners. Here are the four themes that came up most.Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/agent-experience-building-a-cli/https://alasdairb.com/posts/agent-experience-building-a-cli/AX is the new DX. I've been noodling on an experimental CLI for ClickHouse to improve my life working with agents.Mon, 16 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/building-a-nifi-processor-in-python/https://alasdairb.com/posts/building-a-nifi-processor-in-python/Apache NiFi 2 added support for Python Processors, here's how to create a NiFi dev environment and install a custom Python ProcessorMon, 02 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/building-a-simple-rest-api-in-nifi/https://alasdairb.com/posts/building-a-simple-rest-api-in-nifi/In a previous post I discussed using REST APIs to enrich records. This post will cover building the corresponding REST API that I used in that post.Mon, 09 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/connecting-to-a-secure-impala-via-nifi-with-tls-and-kerberos/https://alasdairb.com/posts/connecting-to-a-secure-impala-via-nifi-with-tls-and-kerberos/In this post, I'll demonstrate one way to connect NiFi to a secured Impala with ExecuteSQL via the JDBC driver.Fri, 04 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/enriching-records-with-lookuprecord-rest-apis-in-nifi/https://alasdairb.com/posts/enriching-records-with-lookuprecord-rest-apis-in-nifi/It's common to want to enrich IoT data with the results of a REST API call . Here's how to build this flow using NiFi.Sun, 16 May 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/getting-started-with-nifis-scriptedreader-by-processing-key-value-pairs-part-1/https://alasdairb.com/posts/getting-started-with-nifis-scriptedreader-by-processing-key-value-pairs-part-1/Records have become an integral part of working with NiFi. They allow us to treat our data as more than just a bunch of bytes.Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/importing-individual-flow-definitions-in-nifi/https://alasdairb.com/posts/importing-individual-flow-definitions-in-nifi/You can easily import flow definition json files straight from the NiFi GUI. This post will quickly demonstrate how.Sun, 22 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/installing-nifi-1-14-0-on-linux-non-production/https://alasdairb.com/posts/installing-nifi-1-14-0-on-linux-non-production/This post is going to walk through installing version 1.14.0 of NiFi on a Linux host (Fedora), and discuss the new secure-by-default changes.Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/introducing-dbt-impala/https://alasdairb.com/posts/introducing-dbt-impala/dbt has made a splash in the data ecosystem, and at the Cloudera Innovation Accelerator, we're bringing dbt to Apache Impala.Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/is-ai-agent-rust-crate/https://alasdairb.com/posts/is-ai-agent-rust-crate/AI agents are the new users of CLIs. I published a new Rust crate is-ai-agent to let CLIs know when they're being used by AI.Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/kafka-with-multiple-listeners-and-sasl/https://alasdairb.com/posts/kafka-with-multiple-listeners-and-sasl/This post will quickly discuss how to configure Kafka with multiple listeners for client & inter-broker traffic.Sat, 07 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/keeping-up-with-warpstream/https://alasdairb.com/posts/keeping-up-with-warpstream/WarpStream is an interesting cloud-native Kafka alternative that is challenging the assumptions of the past. Here's why it matters.Fri, 26 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/mixing-it-up-with-tinybird-co/https://alasdairb.com/posts/mixing-it-up-with-tinybird-co/I've had a brilliant 2-and-a-bit years with Cloudera, but in a surprising turn of events, I've decided it's time for something a little bit different.Fri, 03 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/moving-the-data-dir-of-mariadb-on-centos7-rhel7/https://alasdairb.com/posts/moving-the-data-dir-of-mariadb-on-centos7-rhel7/A quick look at how to safely move the existing data directory of MariaDB on a CentOS7 host from the terminal.Fri, 04 Sep 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/my-take-on-developer-experience/https://alasdairb.com/posts/my-take-on-developer-experience/Developer Experience does not mean ‘does this look pretty’ or even ‘does this solve a problem’. It means ‘does this help you solve the problem’.Mon, 21 Nov 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/nifi-in-production-nifi-registry/https://alasdairb.com/posts/nifi-in-production-nifi-registry/Version Control is everyone's favourite subject, so how does it work with NiFi? This post explains how to use NiFi Registry to version control your NiFi flows.Mon, 22 Mar 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/nifi-resources-for-learning-improving/https://alasdairb.com/posts/nifi-resources-for-learning-improving/It's always a bit of a learning curve to get started with any new tool. This is a list of my favourite resources for keeping up to date with NiFi.Mon, 23 Nov 2020 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/nifi-terminology-basics/https://alasdairb.com/posts/nifi-terminology-basics/This post is going to cover all of the basic terminology that you will need to know when working with Apache NiFi.Sun, 05 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/s3-event-notifications-in-nifi/https://alasdairb.com/posts/s3-event-notifications-in-nifi/Pulling new files from storage is common, typically using the ListFile -> FetchFile pattern. For S3, we can instead use S3 Event Notifications.Sat, 04 Sep 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/the-cloudera-innovation-accelerator-me/https://alasdairb.com/posts/the-cloudera-innovation-accelerator-me/I recently took on a new role at Cloudera as a Senior Developer Advocate in the newly formed Cloudera Innocation Accelerator.Thu, 31 Mar 2022 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/the-lacking-future-of-etl/https://alasdairb.com/posts/the-lacking-future-of-etl/ETL provides no real value, it's just really expensive glue. So-called 'Zero-ETL' has the potential to free up so much $$$.Tue, 07 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMThttps://alasdairb.com/posts/there-is-no-data-engineering-roadmap/https://alasdairb.com/posts/there-is-no-data-engineering-roadmap/Data Engineering is booming and many are looking for a cheat sheet to get started. Do you really need to learn 200 tools before you get your first job?Sat, 08 Jul 2023 00:00:00 GMT