Teaching How to simplify building NodeJS APIs with Loopback Framework

In this blog, I am going to show you how to get started with the Loopback framework to easily auto-build REST APIs in NodeJS and persistence layer in a variety of options, including relational and non-relational databases e.g. In-memory DB, MongoDB, MySQL, Cassandra, Oracle, etc.

In terms of API design and development, Loopback allows you to work “top-down” or “bottom-up”. I am going to cover both approaches in this blog.

First, we are going to create an API model definition in place, as we are building the REST APIs, this exercise will give us a Swagger-based API definition. Alternatively, we are going to start from an existing Swagger definition and use it to implement NodeJS REST APIs pointing to a persistence layer of choice (in-memory DB, MongoDB, MySQL, DB2, Oracle, etc.). I personally prefer the “API First/Top Down” approach, as it gives me the option to properly design and test my APIs first and then, simply move to implementation phase, but this ultimately depends on situations, preferences and requirements.

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Entities and Intents: crawling through Natural Language Processing

I’m afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.

Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think

Yours in distress,

Alan
(Alan Turing)

The journey started five months ago when I went to Bangkok to attend the Intelligence Chatbots Masters Training run by Oracle Product Management. Since then, I’ve been lucky enough to dive deeper into the world of Natural Language Processing. While I think it’ll take me a while to transition from crawling into walking through this fascinating world I’m happy to start sharing my findings.

This blog is about Entities and Intents which are the key building blocks for Natural Language Processing.

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Oracle IoT – Working with Sigfox/Thinxtra Devices

How to use the Thinxtra devices and Sigfox network with the Oracle IoT cloud service.

Introduction

There are lots of activities happening today in the world of IoT (Internet of Things).  The market is growing at a staggering pace.  Oracle, of course, is providing services in this area, mainly to support our many great SaaS applications.  Almost every application can benefit from data coming from devices on machines, automobiles, medical devices, human wearables and such.  However, there are several issues people face:

  • How to work with all the various devices.
  • How to manage the devices and information.
  • How to integrate these with other systems in the enterprise.
  • Deployment of devices, configuration, maintenance, versions, upgrades, Etc.

Oracle IoT Cloud service is designed to help with these issues, but it is often overwhelming to get a given device’s data initially into the IoT cloud.  Case and point is with the wonderful devices from Thinxtra which uses the Sigfox network.

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