Building a Real-Time AI Fraud Detection System with Spring Kafka and MongoDB

In this tutorial, we’ll build a real-time fraud detection system using MongoDB Atlas Vector Search, Apache Kafka, and AI-generated embeddings. We’ll demonstrate how MongoDB Atlas Vector Search can be used to detect anomalies in a stream of financial transactions by analyzing a user’s transaction history and identifying suspicious behavior based on LLM-generated embeddings.

Our solution will monitor MongoDB Change Streams using the Java synchronous driver, triggering vector searches on each new transaction to detect potential fraud. While this approach works well for our demo, and for many use cases, we’ll also discuss its limitations. Throughout the tutorial, I’ll cover alternative strategies to optimize performance, whether you need higher transaction throughput, faster fraud detection, or a more scalable architecture.

Serverless Development with AWS Lambda and MongoDB Atlas Using Java

So you need to build an application that will scale with demand and a database to scale with it? It might make sense to explore serverless functions, like those offered by AWS Lambda, and a cloud database like MongoDB Atlas.

Serverless functions are great because you can implement very specific logic in the form of a function and the infrastructure will scale automatically to meet the demand of your users. This will spare you from having to spend potentially large amounts of money on always on, but not always needed, infrastructure. Pair this with an elastically scalable database like MongoDB Atlas, and you’ve got an amazing thing in the works.

In this tutorial, we’re going to explore how to create a serverless function with AWS Lambda and MongoDB, but we’re going to focus on using Java, one of the available AWS Lambda runtimes.

Extend Legacy Java Android Applications With NativeScript And Angular

As some of you might know, before I started developing cross platform mobile applications using Ionic Framework and NativeScript, I was developing Android applications using nothing more than the Android SDK and Java. I still have one of my first applications, SQLTool, for sale in Google Play, and it was written with Java and Android. When building mobile applications, frameworks like NativeScript are incredibly attractive to web developers because they can use a common set of web design and development skills. However, NativeScript can be equally attractive to development teams writing Android applications with Java.

With NativeScript you can actually build a “polyglot” type application where parts are Java and parts are NativeScript with Angular. To be clear, I’m not talking about rewriting your Java application into modules wrapped in JavaScript like plugins. I’m saying that you can take your 100% Android with Java application and add Activities or Fragments built with NativeScript.

So why is this useful?

Imagine being on a small Android development team with more things to be done than there is time in the day. These Android developers would rather die than use a cross platform framework, but you have plenty of web developers floating around your company. In this scenario, the two worlds can collide and maybe the web developers can create lower (or higher) priority components for the Android application without having to convert the whole application to Android with Java or to NativeScript with Angular.

Support iBeacons In Your Native Android Mobile App

I play around with iBeacons quite frequently. I created my own Internet of Things (IoT) iBeacon project as well as an AngularJS wrapper for using iBeacons in an Ionic Framework application. This time around I figured I’d take my iBeacon adventure to the next level and try to use them in a native Android mobile application.

Using the AltBeacon library by Radius Networks we can easily add iBeacon monitoring and ranging support to our native Android application. We’re going to see how to scan for a variety of proximity beacons and display them within an application.

TPDP Episode #3: Developer Tools that can Make You More Productive Towards Your Next Release

In this episode of The Polyglot Developer Podcast I sit down with two of my good friends, Raymond Camden and Simon Reimler, and discuss developer tools and strategies for being successful. Episode #3: Developer Tools that can Make You More Productive Towards Your Next Release covers a lot of ground and is broken up into three main sections:

1. What tools are used for planning, prior to development and design
2. What tools are used for developing and designing an application all the way to release
3. What tools are used for maintaining and driving the success of a released application

This podcast episode is not specific to any programming language or release platform. In other words, whether your a web developer, mobile app developer, or game designer, you will be able to find this information valuable.

Create A Full Stack App Using Java & Couchbase Server

Full stack development is all the rage right now. Knowing how all the bits and pieces of an application works is a necessity in modern development. Previously I demonstrated how easy it was to create a full stack application using the Couchbase, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js (CEAN) stack, but this time we’re going to be swapping out Node.js for Java.

We’re going to look at creating a full stack application where Java and Couchbase Server acts as our back-end and AngularJS, HTML, and CSS acts as our front-end.

Native Android 101: A Quickstart to Building Android Apps

I am pleased to announce that my third full length quickstart course, Native Android 101: A Quickstart to Building Android Apps, was published on the learning website Udemy. The course follows in the same direction as my Ionic Framework 101 and NativeScript 101 quickstart courses, but this time instead of a hybrid technology we’re using the native Android SDK.

If you’re unfamiliar with the native Android SDK, it is the development kit that Google published for developing Android applications using the Java programming language.

A little background on what I had hoped to accomplish in this course.