This is your weekly summary of Compose news for those changes and updates which can make your life easier. In this edition, self-signed or not self-signed, we show how to quickly tell if a connection string needs a self-signed certificate or not when you connect to Compose. And we also look at the past week's Compose Articles.

Self-signed or LE certificates

We often get asked how users can discriminate between database connections which use self-signed certificates provided by Compose and connections which use Let's Encrypt (or LE) certificates. The Compose UI has been updated to only show self-signed certificates when they are needed but for some thats not enough - for example, when they are automating connections through the API. So here's the golden rule for connections and certificates on Compose.

• If a connection string's host ends with .dblayer.com and it's a connection string for a TLS enabled service, then you will need the self-signed certificate. That means you'll need to get the certificate from the UI or from the API (using GET /deployments/:id or by using the Bach command line tool with bach cacert <deployment name or id>.

• If a connection string's host ends with .composedb.com and it's a connection string for a TLS enabled service, it uses a Let's Encrypt certificate. The server's certificate should be automatically validated by your application and/or operating system. Despite widespread use, there are some systems which still need certificates to work with, such as Python. For those systems, you'll need the lechain.pem certificates. Use them in the same way you use self-signed certificate for enable certificate validation.

Compose Articles

This past week we took a look at the state of MongoDB and Go drivers and covered the news of the week:

• In MongoDB and Go - Moving on from mgo? we bring you up to date with the state of the mgo MongoDB/Go driver and its new home. Then we takle a code-first look at the new MongoDB/Go driver thats being developed at MongoDB Inc .

• In NewsBits, we looked at the Erlang update, the Pika refresh, the slimmer PouchDB and more. There's also handy hints on how to make TLS/SSL certificates for localhost.

That's it for this week's Noteworthy at Compose. Onwards to next week!

Read more articles about Compose databases - use our Curated Collections Guide for articles on each database type. If you have any feedback about this or any other Compose article, drop the Compose Articles team a line at articles@compose.com. We're happy to hear from you.