SATURN 2020

This session introduces the concepts of building microservices, problems associated with building such applications and some solutions. We also discuss an example of a complete end-to-end web applications using Java and Jakarta as a backend, Angular as frontend, and with NoSql or SQL as data store (aka JAQ Stack). We will also discuss the concept building web applications using tech stacks instead of frameworks.


The theme of the presentation is divided into 4 sections as listed below:

1. What - Overview of microservices architectures
2. Why/Problems - Architecture of a web application
3. How/Solutions
- How to use existing technologies as stacks instead of new frameworks to build web applications
- Code demo of an example implementation using Java, Jakarta, Angular, and MongoDB (aka JAQ Stack)
- Overview of how to manage DevOps
4. Next steps

As the development of modern web applications is becoming more sophisticated and challenging, developers often have trouble identifying the core platform and building on top of it. While using Java as the primary technology to render a web application, extending/integrating it with some of the latest JavaScript technologies is a big hassle. And there are more trends with teams and enterprises using more of JavaScript frameworks, especially Angular to build the UI and UX of web applications.

Coming from a Java developer’s perspective, bringing in an application, for example built with Angular, into a Java based web application and deploying it together is a very time-consuming process and there are no standard procedures or technologies that enable them to do it. A quick example of this are applications built on Java-based CMSs (like Adobe Experience Manager); the web applications need to be deployed as a single jar package with the UI embedded into the jar.

JAQ Stack fills in this gap and simplifies the process for developers to build a complete web application using Angular as frontend, Java as backend, and with capability to connect to any database. All of this without the need to learn any new technology or a framework. Applications with JAQ Stack can be built as (A) Monoliths - where the application stack comes with pre-built maven profiles and examples projects that enable developers to bring in an Angular application into a Java EE based web application to build a single deployable War/Jar file. This helps DevOps to manage the entire application as one deployment, as in most standard monoliths; and (B) MicroServices - where the application can be built as microservices with the frontend and backend deployed as separate entities and communicating with each other using standard RESTful architectures.