Backend

Running database migrations without locking a production table
Backend
Running database migrations without locking a production table

A migration that takes four seconds on your laptop can hold a lock for four minutes on a production table with real traffic. During those minutes every insert, update and select on that table queues behind the DDL. Requests time out, the connection pool fills, and the whole app looks broken even though only one table is affected. The fix is ...

By BrainSoft  |   11 September 2026
Choosing between REST and GraphQL for an internal API
Backend
Choosing between REST and GraphQL for an internal API

Internal APIs are a different animal from public ones. You control every consumer, so you can change a contract and ship the fix in the same afternoon. That freedom cuts both ways: it removes the main reason people reach for GraphQL (letting strangers query whatever they want) and it makes the cost of a bad choice land entirely on your own team. I've built both, and the ...

By BrainSoft  |   10 September 2026
What breaks first when a Laravel app gets more traffic
Backend
What breaks first when a Laravel app gets more traffic

A Laravel application running on a single virtual server handles moderate traffic with zero complaints. Then a marketing push lands, concurrent users jump from twenty to five hundred, and response times crawl from sixty milliseconds to twenty seconds before the web server starts throwing 502 Bad Gateway errors.When traffic spikes, PHP-FPM w ...

By BrainSoft  |   05 September 2026