devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: Spring Boot

  • VMware Brings Java 17 Support to Spring Boot Framework

    VMware Brings Java 17 Support to Spring Boot Framework

    VMware this week made a Spring Boot 3.0 update for building microservices-based Java applications that is based on the latest long-term support release for the Java Standard Edition (SE) platform.

    Michael Minella, senior director of software engineering at VMware, said the latest edition of the framework supports Java 17. The hope is that adding this support will encourage organizations to move from Java 8 to the latest long-term release of the platform without requiring multiple upgrades to other previously released editions of Java SE.

    In addition, Spring Boot 3.0 now also natively supports a high-performance Java development kit (JDK) known as GraalVM along with version 6.0 of the Spring framework for building Java applications using OpenJDK, an open source version of Java SE that VMware made available earlier this month.

    VMware added support for Micrometer and Micrometer Tracing to improve the observability of Spring applications that will increasingly include multiple microservices dependencies.

    Finally, VMware also added support for Jakarta Enterprise Edition (EE) 10, an open source extension of Java SE that is being advanced under the auspices of the Eclipse Foundation.

    Minella said support for Java 17 coupled with GraalVM provides a stable foundation for building Java applications that are significantly faster than applications that rely on Java 8—still the most widely used edition of the platform. DevOps teams should begin to adopt a new standard for building and deploying the Java applications that still dominate enterprise IT environments, Minella said.

    There is, of course, no shortage of programming languages being used to build enterprise applications. After three decades, however, Java continues to dominate, in large part because of the sheer number of developers that have Java programming skills.

    It’s less clear how quickly legacy Java applications will be updated to run on Java 17 and the GraalVM. Now that Java 17 is supported in Spring Boot—the most widely used framework for building Java applications—the pace of adoption for the latest long-term release of the Java SE platform should accelerate in 2023.

    In addition, Minella noted the latest edition of the Spring framework will put organizations in a better position to take advantage of forthcoming advances such as Project Loom, an OpenJDK effort to replace threads with a lighter-weight concurrency model based on fibers that are managed via the Java runtime rather than the underlying operating system.

    Collectively, these and other technologies will make it less expensive to run Java applications that are significantly faster than previous generations of applications, he added.

    Most DevOps teams will find themselves managing a mix of Java applications—constructed using multiple variants of the core Java SE platform—for many years to come. However, it’s probable most new Java applications will be based on Java 17. In addition, there will be efforts to modernize legacy applications based on previous iterations of Java SE. As a result, most DevOps teams working in enterprise IT environments should expect to see an increase in the overall number of Java-based projects using microservices moving through their pipelines in the months ahead.

  • Eclipse Foundation Touts Jakarta Progress

    Eclipse Foundation Touts Jakarta Progress

    The Eclipse Foundation today published the results of survey of 2,180 software developers that finds over half of respondents (55%) have adopted Java/Jakarta EE 8.

    In addition, the Eclipse Foundation is making available an update to the Jakarta Enterprise Edition (EE) specification that will move away from the javax namespace to embrace jakarta namespaces for all components.

    Jakarta EE 8 is essentially Java EE 8, which Oracle agreed would become open source software when it transferred ownership last year to the Eclipse Foundation. The transition from Java EE to Jakarta nomenclature remains a work in process.

    The Eclipse Foundation finds the use of Java technologies is in a state of flux across the board. For example, adoption of Java 11 now stands at 28%, while Java 14 adoption is at 11%, according to the survey. That compares to 64% that are still employing Java 8.

    Spring/Spring Boot at 44% adoption continues to be the leading framework for building cloud-native applications, compared to 35% using Jakarta EE and 16% for Red Hat Quarkus, a framework that runs natively on Kubernetes.

    Usage of Eclipse Che, an open source integrated development environment (IDE) for building applications on Kubernetes, now stands at 11%, the survey also finds.

    Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said it’s clear organizations are now employing multiple frameworks to build Java applications, given a 13% drop in reliance on Spring/Spring Boot from last year’s survey results.

    However, the survey also finds that overall, the use of Java to build microservice applications has declined to 39% from 43% during the same period. That drop may reflect both the complexity of building microservices-based applications, given the fact that 25% of survey respondents said they are using Java to build monolithic applications, said Milinkovich.

    At the same time, some organizations may be opting to lift and shift existing monolithic Java applications into the cloud in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, noting once redeployed, those organizations may then opt to modernize those applications using microservices.

    With access to many local data centers limited during the pandemic, many organizations may have decided the most prudent option was to lift and shift Java applications as they are than re-engineer them first, he added.

    There are currently 12 frameworks officially that are compatible with Jakarta EE 8, which Milinkovich said is indicative of the continued relevance of Java technologies for building applications both inside and out of the cloud. Now that Java is available as open source software, the level of innovation surrounding Java platforms will also accelerate, he said.

    There is still a large base of developers that rely on Java and by extension Jakarta to build enterprise applications. However, IT organizations now routinely employ a wide range of programming languages and platforms to build applications. Java is still the most dominant when it comes to building backend applications; however, many organizations are still evaluating their options when it comes to building cloud-native applications on platforms such as Kubernetes.

    Java in all its forms will, of course, be around for a long time to come. The only real question is how much organizations will continue to rely on it, in an IT world that continues to transform.