A cloud-native framework is a software system or platform that provides a set of tools to build cloud-native applications. These frameworks are designed for the cloud computing environment and are used by organizations to develop applications that are scalable and resilient.
In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about cloud-native principles, their differences from traditional applications, as well as some popular cloud-native Java frameworks.
Cloud-Native Frameworks vs. Traditional Applications
The traditional method of building applications is to use a monolithic framework. Monoliths are large, complex applications that do many things. For example, an application that handles payments may need to connect to a payment gateway, store credit card information, and send SMS notifications. This application could be written in one language and use one framework.
Cloud-native applications are built on a set of common design principles and practices. They are designed to be able to run anywhere, from the cloud or on-premises, with little or no changes in application code and infrastructure code.
Cloud-native applications are typically microservices-based, but they can also be monolithic in nature. The difference is that they’re designed to be distributed across multiple containers that run on multiple hosts in a cluster, rather than having one container per host.
If your organization has been building traditional applications for some time now, it’s worth noting that cloud-native applications have some significant differences when compared to traditional applications. These differences are particularly important if you’re planning on migrating your existing service portfolio to the cloud or developing new services for an existing application platform.
The Difference Between Cloud-Native Frameworks and Traditional Applications
Traditional applications are not designed for containerization or cloud-native architectures; they’re designed for running on physical hardware in a data center with dedicated resources for each part of the stack (e.g., a database server) and managed by an operations team who installs and configures everything manually. The software that powers these applications often has its own ecosystem of tools and libraries developed by third parties over time (for example, Apache Spark), but most of them are still single points of failure (SPOFs). In other words, they rely on specific versions.
What are Cloud-Native Frameworks?
Cloud-native applications are designed to use the cloud’s resources in the most efficient way possible. They are built using microservices and can be deployed on any cloud platform, including public clouds like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, private clouds, or a combination of both.
They typically have support for multiple programming languages, such as Java, JavaScript (NodeJS), Python, and Go.
Cloud-native frameworks provide a set of tools and services to help you develop your application. They also provide a set of best practices for building applications in this new paradigm of computing.
Let’s quickly review some of the top Java frameworks for a cloud-native world.
Spring Cloud
Spring Cloud is a collection of Spring-based cloud services that make it easy to create distributed systems. It contains several dozen modules, with more than 20 core projects. The goal of Spring Cloud is to make it easier for you to build and operate enterprise Java applications on the cloud. Here are some key features:
- Built-in support for connecting to multiple cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), IBM Bluemix, Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), Oracle Container Service (OCS) and Red Hat OpenShift.
- Support for modern configuration management tools like Ansible and Puppet Enterprise via Pivotal CF.
- Support for creating other microservices that can run on the same cluster or even connect them together using service discovery frameworks like Consul or Etcd or Zookeeper.
Micronaut
Micronaut is a modern, JVM-based, full-stack microservices framework. It has been built with ease of use and developer productivity in mind.
Micronaut is built on top of Netty IO and provides the tools needed to design and build microservices in Java. It includes features such as:
- Support for common HTTP clients (Jersey, OkHttp)
- Support for JSON Web Token authentication
- An easy-to-use Dependency Injection API
Micronaut is a lightweight, high-performance microservices framework for building applications on the JVM. It’s designed to make writing microservice-based distributed systems quick and easy.
Micronaut has an opinionated view of how HTTP requests should be processed, which can be advantageous for teams who want to avoid debates over which approach is best. But if you prefer another way of doing things, Micronaut gives you the tools to override its default behavior without having to replace any framework code or APIs.
- What Advantages Does it Offer?
Microservices are a popular way to build large, complex applications. Microservice frameworks like Micronaut offer many advantages:
- They separate your application into smaller parts, which makes it easier to isolate and maintain individual components.
- They help you write more modular code that can be reused in multiple projects.
- They allow for more efficient testing because each service can be tested separately from the others.
Micronaut’s modularity features include support for dependency injection and configuration loading from multiple sources (environment variables, files, etc.). It also supports hot redeploying of services while they’re running (without having to restart them), which is useful during development or when you need to fix bugs quickly during deployment timeframes.
Spring Boot
Spring Boot is an opinionated, convention-over-configuration framework for building Java applications. It’s designed to be used for all types of projects – from small applications to enterprise systems (as well as big data and cloud projects). Spring Boot helps you build enterprise-grade applications with minimum effort.
Spring Boot makes it easy to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based applications with minimum configuration. Its key features include: auto configuration, externalized configuration, Convention over Configuration (Dependency Injection), support for multiple profiles, hot code reloading, production mode (to disable monitoring), powerful restart on changes capability, and more!
Vertx3
Vertx3 is an open-source toolkit for building reactive applications on the JVM using Kotlin or Java8+ syntaxes. It uses reactive streams as well as other asynchronous programming models like callbacks/futures rather than threads or blocking APIs
Concluding ThoughtsÂ
There are many frameworks out there to choose from when you are building a cloud-native application. The ones listed above have been chosen because they all have different strengths that make them suitable for different types of projects. If you are looking at building an API, Spring Boot may be the right choice. If you need something lightweight and modular, then Micronaut could work well for you.
However, no matter what framework is being used, it’s important that all developers take note of how much effort goes into maintaining such large code bases so that we can keep our systems running smoothly without spending too much time maintaining them ourselves!
The best choice, in any case, would be to collaborate with experienced developers to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of your application or project. Digilite will be happy to help you with that!