Is it possible to use serverless Java, and if so, why would you want to adopt this technology?
Serverless deployments are all the rage right now. By going serverless, your business can save a lot of money. Because serverless deployment eliminates the physical barrier to entry, any business can harness the power of scalable computing without having to purchase expensive systems.
Going serverless also means your administrators and developers can spend more time focusing on more important tasks and less on provisioning and managing complicated hardware.
With serverless systems, it's all about the software side.
However, with Java reigning as one of the most popular programming languages on the planet, many companies still depend on it to function.
So how do these two technologies come together? Let's take a look.
What is serverless Java?
Instead of thinking of it as a language, let's look at it from the structure of Java applications. By using serverless Java applications, you gain the advantage of cloud computing, which (as I mentioned earlier) allows your developers to focus all of their time on building the applications your company needs to solve business problems and provide services to customers and clients. customers.
By leveraging cloud computing, your Java applications gain the advantage of scalability, integrated runtimes, resource management, security, and massive networking. Without the burden of physical limitations, your Java applications can run on demand with high availability. Try this in your internal data center and you'll quickly see that Java applications don't scale as well without the resources of a cloud provider by your side.
And because the entire physical hardware is abstracted from developers, they can dream bigger and deliver more.
The advantages of serverless Java include the following:
- Easier application delivery
- Simplified and efficient maintenance
- Scaling the usage-based cost structure
- Faster time to market
- Faster updates
- Greater scalability capabilities
- Scale to zero when idle
- Stateless operation
- Event-driven execution with triggers
- Automation
- The platform handles all starting, stopping and scaling actions
One way to migrate your Java development to a serverless framework is with the help of Spring. Spring is an open source framework that provides all the infrastructure support needed for Java applications to run serverless. With Spring, developers can build high-performance Java applications with plain old Java objects (POJOs).
Spring provides:
- The choice of reactive, imperative or hybrid programming styles
- Composition and adaptation of functions
- Support for reaction functions
- Transparent type conversions
- Packaging Functions for Java Deployments
The serverless model works something like this: a developer loads application code that does something and depends on a specific trigger to launch. When the specified trigger happens, the code runs and responds to a specified event. Again, this workflow is a perfect environment for Java. And because you can create highly functional web applications with Java, serverless systems become an ideal environment for the Java language.
Which language is best for a serverless framework?
The next question that comes to mind is whether or not Java is the best language for serverless computing. This, of course, depends on your use case. To answer this question, let's take a look at which languages are supported by the top serverless providers. If we look first at Java, we see that it is supported by the Big Three: AWS, Google and Azure. However, if we look at the world's most popular programming language (JavaScript), we see that it is supported by AWS, Google Azure, Netlify, Vercel, and Cloudflare.
Next up is TypeScript, which is compatible with the same list as JavaScript.
Go comes in third place with support from Netlify, AWS, Google, Azure and Vercel.
In fourth place is Python with support from AWS, Google, Azure, Vercel and Cloudflare.
Ruby and Java are tied for fifth place, with Ruby gaining support from AWS, Google and Vercel and Java gaining support from AWS, Google and Azure.
With that out of the way, it's safe to assume that JavaScript is best for a serverless framework, but seeing as how Java is supported by all three major cloud providers, there's no way to rule it out.
What can you build with serverless Java?
With serverless Java, you can build applications for content streaming, web applications, single-page web applications, multi-cloud deployments, and even work on containerized applications like those you can deploy and manage through Kubernetes . Additionally, serverless Java is perfectly suited for synchronous API backend services for mobile apps, B2B projects, sticky logic, and asynchronous message and file processing.
What is the disadvantage of serverless Java?
If there is a downside to using Java in a serverless architecture, it would be cold start performance. Java isn't the fastest language in the world, which means cold start times can be a little slower than other languages. It's true that we're often talking about seconds of difference, but if you have signups starting throughout the day, those seconds can add up.
However, with the help of proper tuning, these cold start times can be reduced to milliseconds. Yes, this means that your developers must have excellent Java skills and understand serverless computing very well, but with this knowledge in hand, they can overcome this drawback so that Java performs well enough for enterprise-scale use. .
If you liked this, be sure to check out one of our other Java articles:
- 10 Best Java NLP Libraries and Tools
- 7 Best Java Profiler Tools for 2021
- Top 10 most popular Java frameworks
- What is Java used for? 8 things you can create
- 7 Best Java Testing Frameworks in 2021
Source: BairesDev
