July 2023 Summaries

Replay, an annual conference dedicated to software engineering platforms and practices, will take place in Seattle from September 12-14, 2023. The event aims to bring together hundreds of backend engineers to discuss the future of software engineering and Temporal adoption. Attendees can expect to meet industry leaders, engage with product teams, participate in workshops, attend sessions on best practices, connect with community peers, and more. Registration is open at temporal.io/replay.

The newsletter, dated July 25th, highlights several updates and events from Temporal, including the release of Temporal 101 in Python and the .NET SDK's availability in Public Beta. Notable technological advancements include enhanced logging and performance in TypeScript SDK v1.8 and schedule support in Java SDK v1.20. Temporal is actively participating in upcoming events, with talks and workshops scheduled at the We Are Developers Conference in Berlin and DevOpsDay Chicago. The newsletter also promotes the 2023 Replay Conference, set to take place from September 12-14 in Bellevue, featuring workshops and discussions with industry experts. Additionally, resources such as a Temporal 101 course in Python, a video on deterministic execution, and insights into the Actor Model with Temporal Workflows are highlighted, encouraging community engagement through platforms like Community Slack and Twitter.

Temporal has been added to the CVE Program as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA), allowing users who self-host Temporal to receive alerts about known issues and determine what actions are necessary to secure their clusters. This milestone reflects Temporal's commitment to security and transparency, with a focus on reporting vulnerabilities through industry-standard Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) numbers. A recent report by Datadog led to the identification of a potential vulnerability in Temporal Server due to default configuration issues, which has been addressed in version 1.20 and can be mitigated in prior versions by setting a specific configuration option. The company acknowledges that building software without vulnerabilities is ideal but recognizes the importance of community reporting and transparency in achieving a high level of security.

Temporal has introduced a new feature that allows users to securely generate both CA and end-entity certificates using the Temporal Cloud CLI tool, tcld. This update aims to address the challenges faced by many users in generating these certificates, particularly those without existing certificate management tooling. The process is secure as it runs on the user's local machine, with Temporal never having access to secret keys. Users can now generate mTLS certificates for Temporal Cloud and add them using tcld commands. This feature aims to improve users' experience with Temporal Cloud, with more improvements such as metrics and notifications coming soon.

The saga pattern is a distributed systems design pattern for tasks spanning machine or microservice boundaries where full execution of all steps is necessary. Two main ways microservices can communicate are choreography and orchestration. Choreography is decentralized, decoupled, and good for highly independent microservices but can make control flow unclear and challenging to debug. Orchestration centralizes control flow, making it easier to understand and debug, but has a single point of failure. Temporal automates the orchestration process while avoiding the single point of failure issue by recording program progress in a log, allowing for horizontal scalability and resilience against failures.

The blog post announces that tickets are on sale for Replay 2023, with Early Bird pricing ending on July 16th. Notable technology features include the Public Preview of Schedules and the release of Temporal for VS Code. Upcoming meetups and events include Seattle Meetup (June 29), Tel Aviv Meetup (July 11), EuroPython (July 19-21), and We Are Developers (July 27-28). Resources released include Temporal 101 with Java course, new documentation on setting up Codec Server, and the availability of Technical Onboarding, Production Optimization, or Design Review sessions. Community Favorites highlighted are Learn Temporal With Java, Temporal Server and Kubernetes, and Saga Pattern Made Easy.

The Temporal 101 in Python course is now available for free, online, and self-paced learning. The course covers fundamental Temporal concepts using the Python SDK and is designed for developers new to Temporal. Registration is required to save progress and verify course completions. The course combines written content, videos, assessments, and hands-on exercises, with a certificate of completion at the end. No software downloads are required, as the course uses a browser-based exercise environment provided through GitPod. Those who have already taken 101 in Go, Typescript, or Java can take this course to learn more about the Python SDK and strengthen their understanding of core Temporal components. The course is part of a series that also includes courses in Go, Typescript, and Java, with future courses planned for release in Q3 and 2023.