Architectural Thinking Workshop Report Background and Motivation I have always felt that I lacked structured best practices and proven tools for conducting effective proof of concepts. This gap in my methodology became particularly apparent when working on customer engagements where clear architectural thinking and documentation could have significantly improved outcomes. To address this deficiency, I participated in an internal workshop called “Architectural Thinking.” Workshop Overview The workshop provided a comprehensive toolkit of diagrams, methodologies, and frameworks designed to help consultants and architects better serve customers through structured thinking and clear communication. The approach emphasizes visual modeling and systematic decision-making processes that can be applied across different project phases. ...

A Deep Dive into the Model Context Protocol and Quarkus: Implementing a Keycloak Authentication Workflow This week, I participated in an internal hackathon named “Know Your Tools,” where we researched AI-related topics in small groups. My colleague and I chose to explore the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and authentication, recognizing that permission workflows pose significant challenges in Agentic AIs. In these systems, it’s common for each agent to be granted administrative rights, allowing users to access external systems with more permissions than they typically have. Our goal was to investigate the implementation of a Keycloak authentication workflow in a MCP application. ...

This week, my customer engagements were rather routine, so there’s not much to report on that front. However, I took a deep dive into the upcoming AMQ Broker 8.0 release, and I’d like to share some key insights and highlights from my research. All of these changes are, as always for planned releases, subject to change. AMQ Broker 8.0 Announcements Migration and Support One of the main priorities for the AMQ team is to ensure a smooth migration path from AMQ 7 to AMQ 8. To support this, AMQ 7.13 will benefit from an extended support cycle, giving users plenty of time to plan and execute their upgrades. ...

MySQL Database as Model Registry on OpenShift AI According to the official documentation, when using MySQL as a model registry on OpenShift AI, it is important to ensure that the mysql_native_password authentication plugin is enabled. This is required for the ML Metadata component to successfully connect to your database. If you need to change the authentication plugin, you can follow the instructions provided in the MySQL documentation. After making this change, if you encounter issues connecting, try logging in once with your user credentials using the MySQL CLI. This often resolves any remaining authentication problems. ...

I’ve got several customer questions around our Kafka Schema Registry Apicurio and its features. Here are my results: Red Hat Build of Apicurio Schema Registry Comparison of Apicurio over Confluent Red Hat Build of Apicurio The Red Hat Build of Apicurio Schema Registry is Red Hat’s enterprise-supported offering of the open-source Apicurio Registry. It is designed for organizations that want the flexibility of open-source technology backed by the reliability and support of a major enterprise software vendor. ...

As mentioned in previous posts, I took time out this week with a colleague to research possible presentations at the upcoming Summit Connects. We met in our Berlin office and made plans for various topics, wrote abstracts, refined titles, collected links, and prepared more detailed research. Of course, I also explored the city a bit (I’m very rarely in Berlin) and visited two museums (the Bode Museum and the Gemäldegalerie). We also walked from Museum Island to Potsdamer Platz, where our office is. Then I saw that there are various other things in Berlin that would be worth a visit. So, I’d love to go again. ...

This week I was answering several customer questions about subscriptions and had some internal topics. Not much to mention here apart from… another super exciting and new Workshop around Developer Hub: Platform Engineering: Developer Hub - Platform Engineering workshop First things first: The workshop content can be found here. This workshop is designed for Platform Engineers who are in charge of: Creating standards for technologies that are used across environments (Development, Testing, Production) Defining processes that maximize Development Teams’ efficiency, by unburdening them from platform details. This workshop is built in a learn-by-example style, where we show you how to create, set up, and manage an IDP using Red Hat Developer Hub. The workshop is opinionated and should be viewed as an example of how to approach things. As always, make sure you, as a Platform Engineer, build what your customers (Development Teams) need by soliciting early feedback to ensure you’re on the right track. ...

Developer Hub - The Adventure We’re excited to announce a new workshop that’s currently in development. While still a work in progress, you can already check out the Developer Hub Adventure at: https://rhdh-adventure-organization.github.io/rhdh-adventure/rhdh-adventure/index.html GitLab Integration in Developer Hub Important Note GitLab integration is currently in technical preview status. Please be aware that there is no guarantee of support at this time. Getting Started with GitLab To set up GitLab in your Developer Hub environment, follow the detailed instructions available in our GitLab setup guide. ...

Agentic AI This week we had a team meeting of the German special solution architects (like me) and the sales specialists. We met at a location that’s essentially a table tennis club retreat in Höhr Grenzhausen (near Montabaur). My manager knows this place because he’s a passionate table tennis player, and it’s perfect for a team event like this. The hotel was called Hotel Zugbrücke Grenzau, with a bar across the street where you could play bowling, billiards, or darts. There was also a large spa area and, of course, the table tennis hall. The food was excellent, and we also did a lot of sports activities. ...