https://ivanball.github.io/writing.html A long-form series turning a production .NET framework's architecture decisions into teachable patterns: the Result railway, the transactional outbox, database-per-service, JWKS auth, fitness functions, and more. en-us Sun, 26 Jul 2026 00:14:41 GMT noreply@ivanball.github.io (Ivan Ball-llovera) https://medium.com/@ivanball76/browser-session-cookie-auth-for-blazor-ssr-surviving-the-f5-eb0ea317820e https://medium.com/@ivanball76/browser-session-cookie-auth-for-blazor-ssr-surviving-the-f5-eb0ea317820e Sat, 25 Jul 2026 12:25:21 GMT HttpOnly session cookies and an SSR-time scheme so [Authorize] passes during prerender, with the API still the boundary. Auth & the edge ADR 022 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/permission-based-authorization-capabilities-over-role-checks-ea6574cbee27 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/permission-based-authorization-capabilities-over-role-checks-ea6574cbee27 Fri, 24 Jul 2026 11:34:48 GMT A capability layer over RBAC: permission policies that resolve on demand from a central registry. Auth & the edge ADR 020 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/delete-automapper-explicit-compile-time-dto-mapping-that-you-can-actually-test-9c7013cc5d3f https://medium.com/@ivanball76/delete-automapper-explicit-compile-time-dto-mapping-that-you-can-actually-test-9c7013cc5d3f Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:52:24 GMT Why source-generated, per-entity mappers beat reflection-based mapping for clarity and speed. Auth & the edge ADR 001 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/ephemeral-by-design-sub-second-live-channels-over-one-signalr-hub-0248050e0c8b https://medium.com/@ivanball76/ephemeral-by-design-sub-second-live-channels-over-one-signalr-hub-0248050e0c8b Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:40:19 GMT Sub-second ephemeral events (polls, Q&A, live counts) fanned out over the existing notification hub, with nothing persisted. Auth & the edge ADR 039 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/notifications-as-a-vertical-slice-in-app-inbox-real-time-push-native-push-and-email-c59d5a4f3b69 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/notifications-as-a-vertical-slice-in-app-inbox-real-time-push-native-push-and-email-c59d5a4f3b69 Tue, 21 Jul 2026 12:01:10 GMT A notifications feature built as a clean vertical slice across every layer. Auth & the edge ADR 024 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/problem-details-across-http-and-grpc-rfc-9457-9f20157cf7de https://medium.com/@ivanball76/problem-details-across-http-and-grpc-rfc-9457-9f20157cf7de Mon, 20 Jul 2026 13:33:53 GMT One error contract mapped consistently to HTTP Problem Details and gRPC status. Auth & the edge https://medium.com/@ivanball76/the-self-invalidating-cache-that-lives-in-the-pipeline-not-your-handlers-e11548062d2f https://medium.com/@ivanball76/the-self-invalidating-cache-that-lives-in-the-pipeline-not-your-handlers-e11548062d2f Fri, 17 Jul 2026 12:07:08 GMT A caching decorator where commands invalidate and queries populate, plus an authenticated output-cache tier at the API edge. Auth & the edge ADR 026 ADR 040 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/idempotency-in-one-attribute-safe-retries-for-http-apis-065848fd03f4 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/idempotency-in-one-attribute-safe-retries-for-http-apis-065848fd03f4 Thu, 16 Jul 2026 13:46:11 GMT Dedup client retries with an Idempotency-Key header and cached replay, plus a consumer-side inbox for brokers. Auth & the edge ADR 017 ADR 021 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/password-hashing-done-right-pbkdf2-sha512-600k-iterations-timing-safe-d64ddb802403 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/password-hashing-done-right-pbkdf2-sha512-600k-iterations-timing-safe-d64ddb802403 Wed, 15 Jul 2026 12:22:21 GMT The non-negotiables of password storage in .NET, done correctly and tested. Auth & the edge ADR 032 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/cross-service-auth-without-a-shared-secret-jwks-dual-fetch-478e6f688c7e https://medium.com/@ivanball76/cross-service-auth-without-a-shared-secret-jwks-dual-fetch-478e6f688c7e Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:17:47 GMT Validate another service's RS256 tokens via JWKS discovery, with no shared secret crossing a boundary. Auth & the edge ADR 004 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/event-schema-versioning-never-silently-reshape-an-event-93cd5d4a156d https://medium.com/@ivanball76/event-schema-versioning-never-silently-reshape-an-event-93cd5d4a156d Every integration event carries a schema version; breaking changes get a new event type and an upcaster, never a silent reshape. Data & persistence ADR 010 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/self-ordering-modules-discovered-kahn-ordered-and-extractable-2ce7283a26b5 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/self-ordering-modules-discovered-kahn-ordered-and-extractable-2ce7283a26b5 Modules declare their dependencies and load in topological order, so registration is never hand-sequenced. Data & persistence https://medium.com/@ivanball76/optimistic-concurrency-that-survives-the-round-trip-rowversion-from-database-to-dto-and-back-93d4a794716f https://medium.com/@ivanball76/optimistic-concurrency-that-survives-the-round-trip-rowversion-from-database-to-dto-and-back-93d4a794716f Carry the RowVersion from database to DTO and back, so a concurrent edit fails fast as a conflict instead of silently overwriting. Data & persistence ADR 035 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/ef-core-include-chains-are-a-trap-navigation-populators-decouple-eager-loading-c378fa4497ac https://medium.com/@ivanball76/ef-core-include-chains-are-a-trap-navigation-populators-decouple-eager-loading-c378fa4497ac Eager-load relationships that cross containers and data sources without N+1 or a leaky abstraction. Data & persistence ADR 002 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/one-entity-model-three-databases-polyglot-persistence-behind-a-single-attribute-760e77974d5d https://medium.com/@ivanball76/one-entity-model-three-databases-polyglot-persistence-behind-a-single-attribute-760e77974d5d SQL Server, Cosmos, and SQLite behind a single entity model, with the engine chosen by attribute. Data & persistence ADR 018 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/database-per-service-inside-a-monolith-and-why-265092eb03f1 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/database-per-service-inside-a-monolith-and-why-265092eb03f1 Give each module its own database and outbox before you extract it, so extraction changes hosting, not data. Data & persistence ADR 006 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/the-transactional-outbox-in-net-10-never-lose-an-event-again-f5a9b7a89e51 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/the-transactional-outbox-in-net-10-never-lose-an-event-again-f5a9b7a89e51 Events that survive a crash: persist them atomically with your data, then dispatch at least once. Core patterns ADR 003 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/compose-validators-dont-copy-them-a-reusable-fluentvalidation-kit-8865a6003a9c https://medium.com/@ivanball76/compose-validators-dont-copy-them-a-reusable-fluentvalidation-kit-8865a6003a9c A validation kit that composes FluentValidation rules instead of copy-pasting them across features. Core patterns https://medium.com/@ivanball76/the-cqrs-decorator-pipeline-logging-caching-and-transactions-without-touching-a-handler-fb7679b8bde8 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/the-cqrs-decorator-pipeline-logging-caching-and-transactions-without-touching-a-handler-fb7679b8bde8 Thin command and query handlers wrapped by a Scrutor decorator chain whose order is load-bearing. Core patterns ADR 014 ADR 031 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/specifications-over-linq-spaghetti-composable-reusable-query-intent-8a40dafcbd3d https://medium.com/@ivanball76/specifications-over-linq-spaghetti-composable-reusable-query-intent-8a40dafcbd3d Compose queries from reusable specification objects instead of scattering LINQ across handlers. Core patterns https://medium.com/@ivanball76/kill-the-anemic-domain-model-rich-aggregates-with-factory-methods-that-return-result-44f2e3d89794 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/kill-the-anemic-domain-model-rich-aggregates-with-factory-methods-that-return-result-44f2e3d89794 Push behavior into rich aggregates with factory methods and invariants instead of bags of public setters. Core patterns https://medium.com/@ivanball76/stop-throwing-exceptions-for-control-flow-the-result-railway-in-c-7a02050b554e https://medium.com/@ivanball76/stop-throwing-exceptions-for-control-flow-the-result-railway-in-c-7a02050b554e Model expected failures as Result values with a transport-agnostic error type, and keep exceptions for the genuinely exceptional. Core patterns ADR 013 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/what-good-architecture-actually-means-a-34-category-rubric-you-can-score-yourself-against-4002291a6b6a https://medium.com/@ivanball76/what-good-architecture-actually-means-a-34-category-rubric-you-can-score-yourself-against-4002291a6b6a A two-axis rubric for scoring architecture on maturity and implementation, so 'good architecture' stops being a vibe. Orientation https://medium.com/@ivanball76/modular-monolith-to-microservices-without-the-rewrite-8c3603614f12 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/modular-monolith-to-microservices-without-the-rewrite-8c3603614f12 The cornerstone idea: build the monolith now and extract a service later with no rewrite, via module discovery, gRPC contracts, and a YARP gateway. Orientation ADR 006 ADR 007 ADR 008 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/i-open-sourced-the-enterprise-net-77f9200f3728 https://medium.com/@ivanball76/i-open-sourced-the-enterprise-net-77f9200f3728 Why I open-sourced a production .NET framework and scored it against a 34-category architecture rubric, gaps and all. Orientation