Diagrid Catalyst - The fastest way to write reliable and portable microservices

Hi Product Hunt community! 👋 I'm a software engineer by trade, having spent the majority of my career in writing backend apps, distributed systems and microservices in the cloud. For years I've experienced first hand the frustrations of cobbling together different SDKs, libraries and frameworks, trying to figure out the best way to use a particular pub/sub or database, wasting precious sprint time on infrastructure code and then hoping for the best that my code is able to scale properly in production. This led me to create the Dapr open-source project in 2019, aimed at reducing the complexity of writing cloud applications. Dapr is now used by some of the largest companies in the world, including Grafana, NVIDIA, NASA and thousands of others. The adoption of Dapr was a very strong signal that complexity is the arch-nemesis of software engineers, and that Dapr itself needs to expand beyond just Kubernetes to any developer running their code anywhere. Today, I'm super excited to share with you Diagrid Catalyst, a fully managed version of Dapr that provides developers with APIs for creating event-driven applications, long running stateful workloads using durable execution, global service discovery and state management. You can use these APIs from any compute service in the world: AWS, Azure, GCP, and even on-premises environments. So what can you do with Catalyst? 👇 📄 Integrate and interact with dozens of databases, caches, message brokers or queues  using consistent HTTP/gRPC APIs that hide complexity and implement best practices by default ⚡ Ship your code faster by focusing on what truly matters. Your business logic is complex enough and your time is precious ☕ Remove boilerplate, redundant code and keep your code feeling always fresh 🔎 Get end to end tracing and visualize the call graph between your apps and infrastructure with no need for any instrumentation in your code ⏬ Use a workflow programming model that retries automatically on failure, saves state for every step and makes sure your activities run to completion ✉️ Create loosely coupled microservices with pub/sub eventing easily. Focus on publish and subscribe APIs, and not on fault handling, polling, consumer groups and partitions 📞 Register and discover your services wherever they're running - create a flat, secure network of connected applications 🔒 Improve security - Catalyst makes your databases multi-tenant, gives your apps a unique identity and allows you to set access policies for your apps and infrastructure ☁️ Further offload infrastructure by using Diagrid's fully managed KV store and pub/sub service that can scale to millions of requests per second with just a few lines of code Catalyst in now in public beta and is completely free for you to use. We would love your feedback. It's quite literally made by developers for developers and we're excited to see what you can build with it. Special thanks to @chrismessina for hunting us 🙏

Congrats on the launch of Catalyst! The all-in-one API set for building distributed applications, backed by open-source Dapr, sounds amazing for developers. Excited to see how it simplifies and streamlines the development process!

Congrats, @yaron2! "I’m really impressed by Catalyst! It seems to make building microservices so much easier. Looking forward to trying it out!

I particularly love the ease of integrating databases, queues, and other components via consistent APIs, removing boilerplate code, and adding seamless tracing and security features. This is a fantastic way to streamline event-driven applications, microservices, and stateful workloads—definitely a game-changer for developers dealing with distributed systems. Excited to see how people will leverage Diagrid Catalyst! Best of luck with the public beta! 🚀

Congratulations on launching Catalyst! 🎉 As a fellow software engineer who's spent countless hours wrestling with fragmented libraries and infrastructure code, I can totally appreciate the value of having a powerful, all-in-one set of APIs to streamline the development of distributed applications. The seamless integration with existing infrastructure and the open-source power of Dapr is a game-changer. The idea of focusing on the core business logic rather than boilerplate code is something every developer dreams of. Catalyst seems to offer just that and more. I'm particularly excited about the global service discovery, state management, and the ability to handle event-driven architectures effortlessly. The end-to-end tracing and visualization features are icing on the cake, making it easier to monitor and debug applications. Kudos to the team for bringing this to life, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Catalyst will revolutionize the way we build and deploy distributed systems. Best of luck, and can't wait to dive in and explore all its capabilities! 🚀

hey @yaron_sch, kudos on launching diagrid catalyst. seems like a much-needed solution for developers, although the jargon-filled description could do with some simplifications.

Hey Yaron, How long does it typically take for a developer to get comfortable with Catalyst? Do you have any plans to add more specific industry-focused features in the future? Congrats on the launch!

Catalyst is an impressive platform that empowers developers with a comprehensive set of APIs for building distributed applications. By providing an all-in-one solution, it eliminates the hassle of integrating fragmented libraries, allowing developers to concentrate on the core aspects of their code. The seamless integration with existing infrastructure and the backing of open-source Dapr further enhance its appeal, making it a robust choice for modern application development. One of the standout features of Catalyst is its ability to streamline the development process, significantly reducing the time and effort required to create scalable and reliable applications. The user-friendly interface and extensive documentation make it accessible for developers of all skill levels. As a constructive suggestion, it would be beneficial for Catalyst to include more community-driven resources, such as forums or user groups, where developers can share experiences, best practices, and solutions to common challenges. This could foster a collaborative environment and enhance the overall user experience. Overall, Catalyst is a game-changer for developers looking to simplify their workflow and build powerful distributed applications efficiently!

Congratulations on launch of Diagrid Catalyst....

🎉 Congrats on this innovative solution, Yaron! Catalyst seems to perfectly address the pain points of microservices development. How does it handle security at scale, especially in hybrid environments? 🛡️

Thanks for introducing this! The inclusion of automatic retries and state-saving for workflows really stands out to me.

Exciting launch and some great coverage in TechCrunch as a compliment! “Catalyst is why we founded Diagrid in the first place,” @mark_fussell said. “It’s the very reason because we saw a vision that this complexity and difficulty for developers to build these microservices and distributed applications was not being solved. All the major clouds are still focusing on infrastructure and that’s what they do. They have a really hard time thinking about the application developer space, and then they sort of leave it as an exercise to the reader, as it were, to stitch it all together.”

Can I use this from Vercel? Looks like it'll make my life a lot easier

Hi @yaron2 and congrats on the launch! Just a quick question: how do you ensure a smooth learning curve for any developer that wants to integrate with it?

How customizable are the security policies when it comes to managing access control for apps running across multiple cloud platforms?

Congrats on the launch of Catalyst! 🎉 As a fellow software engineer, I can truly appreciate the value of having an all-in-one set of APIs to build distributed applications. The integration with existing infrastructure and the power of open-source Dapr make this tool a game-changer. The ability to streamline development processes, eliminate boilerplate code, and focus on business logic is a huge win. The features like global service discovery, state management, and end-to-end tracing sound incredibly useful. Plus, the security enhancements and workflow programming model are just icing on the cake. Can't wait to dive in and see how Catalyst can simplify and accelerate my development workflows. Kudos to the team for bringing this to life! 🚀