THE DZONE GUIDE TO

MODERN
JAVA

VOLU M E I I

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Dear Reader,

TABLE OF CONTE NTS

Why isnt Java dead after more than two decades? A few
guesses: Java is (still) uniquely portable, readable to
fresh eyes, constantly improving its automatic memory
management, provides good full-stack support for highload web services, and enjoys a diverse and enthusiastic
community, mature toolchain, and vigorous dependency
ecosystem.
Java is growing with us, and were growing with Java. Java
8 just expanded our programming paradigm horizons (add
Church and Curry to Kay and Gosling) and were still learning
how to mix functional and object-oriented code. Early next
year Java 9 will add a wealth of bigger-picture upgrades.
But Java remains vibrant for many more reasons than the
robustness of the language and the comprehensiveness of
the platform. JVM languages keep multiplying (Kotlin went
GA this year!), Android keeps increasing market share, and
demand for Java developers (measuring by both new job
posting frequency and average salary) remains high. The key
to the modernization of Java is not a laundry-list of JSRs, but
rather the energy of the Java developer community at large.
In fact, the enthusiasm of practicing developers has been
Javas strength since the beginning. The Java platform has
always been backed, but never limited, by a single entity.
Sun first made Java for their own enterprise hardware
and software ecosystem, but WORA made everyone else
want to use it, too. Microsoft failed to fork Java onto a
Windows-flavored JVM because the developer community
spearheaded by Javalobby, DZone in its earliest form
understood the vital importance of a platform-neutral,
industrial-strength, object-oriented language. Google is plenty
gung-ho to create its own languages (Go, Dart) but chose Java
for Android fatefully, since now Java powers far more feature
and smart phones than any other language. A few months
ago Red Hat, IBM, Tomitribe, Payara, and other groups banded
together to sketch out the beginnings of a specification for
microservice support in Java just the most recent of many
platform-driving endeavors of the Java community beyond the
formal JCP.
One of the more convenient effects of Javas strong
commitment to backwards compatibility is that we dont
have to change when the language and/or platform do. But
those changes arent determined by corporate or academic
experiment. A broad-based community means that the Java
ecosystem evolves in response to developers changing realworld needs. Were steering this ship; lets ride it as fast and
as far as it can take us.
So here at DZone were thrilled to publish our 2016 Guide to
Modern Java. No other language has benefited the world as
much as Java, and were proud to be a part of that ecosystem.
We know you are too, and we hope youll be able to do even
more with Java after reading this Guide.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS

10 THE JAVA 8 API DESIGN PRINCIPLES

BY PER MINBORG
13 PROJECT JIGSAW IS COMING
BY NICOLAI PARLOG
18 REACTIVE MICROSERVICES: DRIVING APPLICATION
MODERNIZATION EFFORTS
BY MARKUS EISELE
21 CHECKLIST: 7 HABITS OF SUPER PRODUCTIVE JAVA DEVELOPERS
22 THE ELEMENTS OF MODERN JAVA STYLE
BY MICHAEL TOFINETTI
28 12 FACTORS AND BEYOND IN JAVA
BY PIETER HUMPHREY AND MARK HECKLER
31 DIVING DEEPER INTO JAVA DEVELOPMENT
34 INFOGRAPHIC: JAVA'S IMPACT ON THE MODERN WORLD
36 FROM DESKTOP TO WEB JAVA: A PLANNERS GUIDE TO MIGRATION
BY BEN WILSON
40 HASH TABLES, MUTABILITY, AND IDENTITY:
HOW TO IMPLEMENT A BI-DIRECTIONAL HASH TABLE IN JAVA
BY WAYNE CITRIN
42 EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS INTO JAVA DEVELOPMENT
BY TOM SMITH
46 JAVA SOLUTIONS DIRECTORY
55 GLOSSARY

EDITORIAL

BUSINESS

PRODUCTION

CAITLIN CANDELMO

RICK ROSS

CHRIS SMITH

MATT WERNER

MATT SCHMIDT

DIRECTOR OF CONTENT + COMMUNITY

CONTENT + COMMUNITY MANAGER

MICHAEL THARRINGTON
CONTENT + COMMUNITY MANAGER

NICOLE WOLFE

CONTENT COORDINATOR

MIKE GATES

CEO

PRESIDENT & CTO

JESSE DAVIS
EVP & COO

DIRECTOR OF MARKETING

MATT OBRIAN

SARAH DAVIS

DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

INDUSTRY + VENDOR
RELATIONS
JOHN ESPOSITO

SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST

TOM SMITH

RESEARCH ANALYST

ANDRE POWELL

SENIOR PRODUCTION COORDINATOR

G. RYAN SPAIN

PRODUCTION PUBLICATIONS EDITOR

KELLET ATKINSON

CONTENT COORDINATOR

CONTENT COORDINATOR

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION

SALES@DZONE.COM

ALEX CRAFTS

ART
ASHLEY SLATE
DESIGN DIRECTOR

DIRECTOR OF MAJOR ACCOUNTS

SPECIAL THANKS to our

JIM HOWARD

trusted DZone Most Valuable

SR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE

CHRIS BRUMFIELD
ACCOUNT MANAGER

topic experts, Zone Leaders,

Bloggers, and dedicated users
for all their help and feedback in
making this report a great success.

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Executive
Summary
The most successful programming language in history
owes much of its continuing vitality to the most
effective development community in history. More than
any other widely used programming language, Java
learns from and responds to millions of developers
needs; and the most important perspective on how
Java is working well, and what Java needs to do better,
comes from experienced software engineers spending
hours every day in their Java weeds. Is Java doing its
job? We surveyed 2977 developers to find out. And we
went deeper, seeking to discover exactly how developers
are using Java to solve todays business problems, on
modern deployment topologies, using modern release
practices, in shortening release cycles, with increasingly
modularized application architectures, meeting
increasingly stringent performance requirements.
Heres what we learned.

of view, dive deeper into the lambda calculus. Celebrate your

shrinking chances of cursing the existence of Null.

MICROSERVICES ADOPTION IS GROWING STEADILY

DATA In August 2015, 10% of developers were using

microservices; in January 2016, 24% were using microservices

somewhere in their organization; in a report just published
by Lightbend, 30% are using microservices in production;
and, in our latest survey, 39% of developers are currently
using microservices, and another 19% are planning to adopt
microservices in the next 12 months.
IMPLICATIONS No matter how old the concept, and no matter

how much you appreciate the headaches of locating complexity

in the entire component graph rather than individual nodes,
developers are already architecting their applications as
microservices at significant rates and will doing so even more in
the near future.
RECOMMENDATIONS Consider how you might refactor your

"monolithic" applications into microservices, even if you decide

to retain your "monolith" in production. Become more familiar
with distributed computing principles. Practice domain-driven
design. Read Markus Eiseles article on page 16 below.

NON-JAVA JVM LANGUAGES ARE PROLIFERATING

AND ENJOYING MORE USE, ESPECIALLY SCALA
DATA 45% of developers are using Groovy, up from 39% in 2015.

DATA 84% of developers are now using Java 8, showing steady

41% are using Scala in development (18%), in production (10%),

and/or just for fun (26%), up from 31% in 2015. Clojure use has
doubled over the past year, and Kotlin is now used in significant
numbers, although still mostly just for fun.

growth from October 2014 (27%) through May 2015 (38%), August
2015 (58%), and March 2016 (64%).

IMPLICATIONS The JVM continues to gain momentum even

JAVA 8 IS NOW DOMINANT

IMPLICATIONS Java 8 is the new normal. You are increasingly

(and now extremely) likely to encounter Java 8 code in others

applications (especially applications created in the past year),
and you will be increasingly expected to be able to write code in
idioms influenced by Java 8.
RECOMMENDATIONS Take advantage of features new to Java 8

and assume that you will encounter Java 8 in other developers

code. For more on modern Java API design, check out Per
Minborgs article on page 10.

among non-Java developers. JVM developers are increasingly

playing with programming models beyond object-orientation.
For all the valuable readability introduced by Javas verbosity, the
syntactic sugar offered by Kotlin and Groovy, for example, is not
to be dismissed lightly.
RECOMMENDATIONS Play with other JVM languages: Groovy

for high-productivity scripting, Scala for type-safe and multiparadigm programming, Clojure for Lisp-like macros and
code-as-data functional purity, Kotlin for the pleasure of rapid
development and beyond-Groovy performance on Android.

DEVELOPERS ARE USING NEW-TO-JAVA-8 FEATURES

EXTENSIVELY, ESPECIALLY LAMBDAS AND STREAMS

THE FUTURE OF JAVA LOOKS BRIGHT

DATA 73% of developers are using lambdas. 70% are using the

(42% "very optimistic," 40% "fairly optimistic").

DATA 80% of developers are optimistic about the future of Java

Stream API. 51% are returning Optionals.

IMPLICATIONS Java is neither dead nor dying. Java developers have
IMPLICATIONS Two of the three most important features new

to Java 8 are now used by a large majority of developers. Both

(lambdas and streams) facilitate function composition and (for
certain kinds of function pipelines) more readable code. Multiparadigm programming in Java is a reality. Separately: as Optional
usage increases, NullPointerExceptions become less likely.
RECOMMENDATIONS To exercise your modern Java muscles,

practice refactoring code using lambdas, streams, and Optionals.

To understand functional programming from a theoretical point

both the highest stakes in the future of Java and also the deepest,
most information-rich engagement with the Java community; so
developers aggregate opinions on the future of Java should be an
excellent indicator of the health of the ecosystem.
RECOMMENDATIONS Keep writing Java. Contribute to open-

source Java projects. Participate actively in the communitydriven improvement of the Java platform, whether via the JCP
or through any of the growing set of ancillary organizations and
communities (MicroProfile.io, Java EE Guardians, local JUGs, etc.).

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Key
Research
Findings

so comparison of results is not rigorous; but given the sources

it seems likely that all of these surveys were conducted on a
roughly similar enterprise Java developer population.
Java 8 is far more likely to be adopted for new applications
than to be introduced into existing applications. While 81% of
respondents report using Java 8 for new applications, only 34%
report using Java 8 for existing applications. (The overlap is huge,
of course: only 59 respondents (3% of total) that use Java 8 in
existing applications do not also use Java 8 in new applications.)
But Java 8 adoption in legacy code is also up considerably from
August 2015, when only 20% of respondents reported using Java 8
for existing apps.

2977 software professionals responded to DZones 2016

Java survey. Respondent demographics are as follows:
60% identify as developers or developer team leads
24% identify as architects (no overlap with

developers and developer team leads)

43% have more than 15 years of experience as IT

professionals
42% work at companies whose headquarters are

located in Europe; 31% in the USA

20% work at companies with more than 10,000

employees; 27% with 500-9,999 employees; 20% at

companies with 100-499 employees

1. JAVA 8 NOW DOMINATES NEW APPLICATIONS

It is not surprising that Java 8 adoption is increasing. But
the numbers are becoming impressive: 84% of our survey
respondents are now using Java 8 for old or existing applications.
This number represents a steadily growing adoption curve
over the past two years. In October 2014, a Typesafe survey
showed a Java 8 adoption rate of 27%; in May 2015, a Baeldung
survey showed 38%; in August 2015, our annual Java survey
showed 58%; in March 2016, another Baeldung survey showed
64%. (Not all of these surveys included explicit demographics,

HOW FUNCTIONAL IS YOUR CODE NOW VS. BEFORE JAVA 8?

OVERALL

SCALA USERS ONLY

2. HOW IS JAVA 8 CHANGING HOW

DEVELOPERS WRITE CODE?
Developer usage of particular OpenJDK versions speaks to
developers' attitudes toward Java 8; but usage of language
features new to Java 8 says more about how actual Java code
is changing over time. To understand how Java 8 has changed
how Java developers write code, we asked four questions about
usage and attitudes.
QUESTION 1: Overall do you write more functional Java code now vs.
before Java 8?
1. Of course any Turing-complete language can compute anything
computable; and of course lambdas and streams simply make
convenient certain computations that were possible in previous
versions of Java. But as a programming model becomes more
convenient, it is likely to be used more; and as developers use
it more, their minds are likely to grow more accustomed to
the newly habitual model. It seems surprising, therefore, that
developers do not report writing more "functional" code because
of Java 8. Only 63 responses out of 1977 separated "yes, I write
more functional code because of Java 8" from "no, my code is
no more or less functional now vs. before Java 8" a negligible
difference (51.6% vs. 48.4%) and well within the surveys margin
of error.

2. Two interpretations seem possible. First, suppose that

these respondents reports are accurate; then Java 8 did not
significantly re-habituate Java developers minds toward
a more functional programming model, in spite of newly
simplified constructs. This may indicate that the language

DO YOU MIX "OLD STYLE" (PRE-JAVA 8) AND "NEW STYLE"

(LAMBDAS, STREAMS, OPTIONALS)?
60%
50%

48% 52%

37% 62%

APPLICATION

40%
REPOSITORY

30%
20%
10%

NO MORE OR LESS FUNCTIONAL

YES, I WRITE MORE FUNCTIONAL CODE WITH JAVA 8

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conveniences were well behind its users actual coding work

that Java lambdas and streams were well overdue. But, on the
other hand, "more functional" is vague enough that the half/
half split seems more likely than random to be significantly
affected by the wide range of possible interpretations of the
question. We do have more specific data on usage of new Java
8 constructs (discussed below); but to understand developers
habits, rather than just usage at a given moment in time,
future surveys providing time-series data on usage of these
constructs will be essential.

3. Interestingly, respondents who also use Scala (in development,

in production, or just for fun) were significantly more likely to
write more functional code because of Java 8 (62%). Because
use of Scala probably indicates a more multi-paradigm
(including functional) mental programming model, this
number may suggest that Java 8 is successfully addressing the
needs/preferences of developers who were using other JVM
languages for less-object-oriented code.
QUESTION 2: What "new style" Java 8 features are you using?

1. Java 8 offered many new features, but three stood out as most
important because of their possible ubiquity and significant
effects on program readability, efficiency, and correctness:
lambdas (anonymous functions), the Stream API (function
pipelines w/automatic parallelization via ForkJoinPool
threads), and the Optional (return) type. Of these three, we
hypothesized that lambdas were most likely to be used most,
because they are less likely to require deeper rethinking of
application code.

2. Our results were consistent with this hypothesis, but just

barely. Usage of lambdas and streams is nearly equal both
overall and in either new or refactored code (3-5% difference,
within the surveys margin of error). Moreover, the numbers
were high enough (67-71% in new code; 31-33% in refactored
code) to cause us to re-interpret developers responses to
the general question of "functional" programming adoption
via Java 8. That is, if usage of lambdas and streams (which
facilitate chaining and pipelining, which allows for more
declarative and functional programming) is so high, then
it would seem likely that overall increase in "functional"
programming would be significant as well (but responses to
that explicit question indicate virtually no change). To explain

HAVE THE NEW JAVA 8 FEATURES MADE IT MORE FUN TO

PROGRAM WITH JAVA?

this, we would have to know both (a) how frequently developers

use lambdas and streams (as opposed to whether they use
them at all) and at what stage in code creation they use them
and (b) how their use of lambdas and streams changes their
mental models of their applications.

3. We also accepted write-in Java 8 feature usage, in addition to

the top features described above. The most popular write-in by
far was the new java.time API, which appeared (under various
descriptions) in 24% of write-in responses (45 out of 186). No
other new Java 8 feature was written in more than 10 times.
QUESTION 3: Where do you mix "old style" (pre-Java 8) and "new style"
(Java 8 e.g. lambdas, streams, Optionals) code?
1. The previous questions address how Java 8 features are
affecting developers entire coding outputs. That is, if a
developer is writing multiple new applications but uses Java
8 in only one of them, then that developer will be counted as
using Java 8 in new applications. It also seems important to
understand the effect of Java 8 orthogonally, from the point
of view of the code. So we asked where developers were using
lambdas, streams, and Optionals, in three types of grouping:
in the same repository, the same application, or the same
source file. The results were encouraging for the integration
of functional and object-orientation: 55% of respondents mix
new- and old-style Java in the same application.

2. Two further details merit comment, however. First, only 39%

report mixing "old" and "new" Java in the same repository. The
difference between the 55% and 39% may indicate expansive
and/or inconsistent understanding of the term "application,"
which apparently might or might not be split into multiple
repositories; further, this seems consistent with the rise of
cloud-oriented and microservices-based architectures, which
blur the line between "single application" and "distributed
system" such that the term "application" is increasingly likely to
include code from multiple (separately managed) repositories.

3. Second, significantly fewer respondents mix "old" and "new"

Java in the same source file (36%) than in the same application
(55%). The division of source files is of course very variably
coupled with the domain model, and is sometimes imposed by
frameworks rather than chosen freely by the programmer; so it
is unclear how much of the difference between "old" and "new"
Java style mixing in individual application vs. individual source

WHAT OTHER JVM LANGUAGES ARE DEVELOPERS USING?

45
40

neutral

35

28%

no 8%

2016

30

64% yes

25
20
15
10
5

2015
SCALA

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file is a function of developers perception of the semantics of

source-file divisions, on the one hand, and factors exogenous to
the developers deliberate decisions, on the other.
QUESTION 4: Have the "new style" Java 8 features made it more fun to
program in Java?
1. How developers feel influences what developers do, but many
unpleasant things are worth doing for good technical reasons.
Adoption of Java 8 features is therefore a function of both
developer experience and also technical utility. To distinguish
developers feelings about Java 8 features from use of these
features, we explicitly asked whether the "new style" Java 8
features have made it more fun to program in Java.

2. Overall they have: 64% said yes. Developers who also use
Scala, however, skewed these results significantly: 73% of Scala
users report that the "new style" Java 8 users make it more
fun to program in Java, while only 57% of respondents who
do not use Scala report the same. From this we might draw a
twofold conclusion: that Java 8 had a relatively small effect on
non-Scala Java developers "fun" levels, and has particularly
satisfied developers who were already exploring other
programming paradigms on the JVM.

3. WHAT OTHER JVM LANGUAGES ARE

DEVELOPERS USING?
As Java 8 usage increases, non-Java JVM language usage
increases as well. In 2016 Groovy remains the most popular
non-Java JVM language (45% of respondents use it in
development, in production, or just for fun), but Scala is now
very nearly as popular (41%). Year over year usage increases
are significant for four JVM languages: Scala (up from 31% in
2015), Groovy (39% in 2015note the slower growth vs. Scala),
Clojure (13% in 2016 vs. 6% in 2015), and Kotlin (barely used (2%)
in 2015, now 12%, since the language went GA this February).
Increases in both Scala and Clojure usage presumably reflect
JVM developers generally increasing interest in functional and
multi-paradigm programming, as discussed above.
The role of each of these languages varies considerably,
however. Groovys lead in production remains strong: 80%
more developers use Groovy in production than use Scala in
production, while just over half again as many developers
use Scala "just for fun" as use Groovy "just for fun." Kotlin

ARE YOU CURRENTLY USING MICROSERVICES?

usage is almost entirely "just for fun" (as might be expected

from a language barely half a year beyond GA). For Clojure,
the difference between "in development" and "just for fun" is
negligible, while it is significant (9-10%) for both Groovy and
Scalaalbeit in reverse order (Groovy is more likely to be used
in development than just for fun, while Scala is more likely to
be used just for fun than in development).

4. ENTERPRISE JAVA PLATFORMS: JAVA EE VS.

SPRING (ROUND N)
It is currently difficult to predict how Java EE will evolve in the
future. This year the extremely slow progress on most Java EE
JSRs, among other things, prompted a number of Java developers
to found the Java EE Guardians, an independent group dedicated
to advancing Java EE with as much community involvement as
possible. Until two days ago (as of this writing on 9/20/2016),
Oracle had not publicly discussed any substantive roadmap for
Java EE 8; and in spite of an enthusiastic presentation at JavaOne
2016, which alleviated some concerns, it seems that Java EE 8 is
now significantly delayed (now not scheduled to ship until late
2017). However, Java EE 9 is scheduled to release a year latera
schedule that suggests serious commitment to the platform in
general, but with priorities currently unknown.
Nevertheless, usage of Java EE remains high and continues to
modernize. Overall usage of Java EE remains virtually unchanged
since 2015; but users have shifted from Java EE 5 to Java EE 7,
which 41% of respondents are now using.
Spring usage, on the other hand, has increased significantly year
over year, especially Spring 4.x (49% in 2016 vs. 38% in 2015).
Major caveat: these numbers reflect answers to slightly but
meaningfully different questions, which make year-over-year
comparison of Spring with Java EE particularly difficult. Last
years question asked "which platforms do you use;" this years
asked "which platforms do you or your organization use." Because
Spring is more modular than Java EE, it is harder in the case of
Spring than in the case of Java EE for an average developer to tell
whether the "platform" is used by the entire organization, given
that the developer is themselves already using Spring, depending
on how modularly the developer understands "Spring." That is,
any developer who uses any Java EE API will be able to answer
that their organization uses Java EE; but a developer who uses
RANK HOW MUCH YOU TRUST THE FOLLOWING DRIVERS/
STEWARDS OF THE JAVA LANGUAGE AND PLATFORM
LOWEST RANK

no, and I
dont plan to

30%

39%

yes

HIGHEST RANK

SCORE:
7,035

JCP Development
Community as a whole
(JCP linked or not)

5,451

Oracle
Current (2012+)
Java Champions

not now,
but I plan to

31%

5,395
5,233

The existing JCP

Red Hat

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Spring Boot to spin up a web app, for example, may or may not
consider "my organization uses Spring" to be true in the context
of a question that also includes "Java EE" versions as answer
options. The current research project aims to discover further
breakdown of enterprise Java platform usage by module and API;
a breakdown with adequate detail proved too cumbersome to
include in this survey, but is planned for a follow-up survey.

5. THE FUTURE OF JAVA

Java is obviously not dead; but is it moribund? Most evidence
that bears on this question can be spun both optimistically and
pessimistically. For example, perhaps the high rate of Java 8
"new-style" / functional feature adoption indicates that Java is
responding well to developers needsor perhaps it indicates
pent-up demand from a developer community dissatisfied
with the glacial pace of the JCP and JEP. Again, maybe the
increasing adoption of non-Java JVM languages indicates a
thriving ecosystem built on a common bytecode; but whether
this means that "Java" is getting stronger because the JVM is
spawning more higher-level languages, or that "Java" is getting
weaker because its secret WORA sauce is being leveraged by
other languages, depends on the level at which you locate your
concept of "Java."
Because this sort of evidence is highly polyvalent, and because
so much of a languages vitality is felt while actually writing code
(rather than answering survey questions), it seemed important
to ask developers separately for their feelings about the future
of the Java ecosystem. Moreover, individual experiences of
a language ecosystems "vitality" visible in virtually any
comment thread comparing Java and Scala, for examplevary
so tremendously that aggregation of these sentiments seems
particularly necessary. So we asked four explicit questions
aimed at developers thoughts about the future of Java.
QUESTION 1: How do you feel about the future of Java?
4. Overall respondents are optimistic: less than 6% are
"pessimistic" (either "very" or "slightly") about the future of
Java, and slightly more are "very optimistic" (43%) than "fairly
optimistic" (40%). These results are virtually identical to last
years (as the differences for each answer response fall within
both surveys independent margins of error). This suggests
that developers have detected no major new signals about
the future of Javadespite the fact that Java 9 was delayed
twice this year. Either the release date of Java 9 (at least within
its current window) does not impact developers overall
optimism about the future of Java, or the reasons given for the
delays (primarily around Jigsaw) in public discussions seem
acceptable to most developers.
Note: the first delay of Java 9 was announced in December
2015, after our 2015 survey closed; the second delay was
announced briefly before our 2016 survey closed, but in
time to affect about a fifth of responses received if those
respondents were very up-to-date on the OpenJDK mailing
list. So it seems probable that the majority of the effect
of these delays on our data does not take into account
the second delay announcement; but the exact amount is
unknowable.

QUESTION 2: What is the most important new feature of Java 9?

Jigsaw, the higher-level modularity system coming in Java 9 (and
cause of much of the delay), remains the most important new
feature of Java 9 in developers eyes, as in last years survey.
HTTP/2 support remains the second-most-important as well.
Exact numbers are not comparable (this year we added a "no
opinion" option), but the constant order offers quantitative
confirmation of the generally accepted opinion that modularity
will make the biggest difference to Java developers at large (and
not just the developers of OpenJDK itself).
QUESTION 3: Are you currently using microservices?
Java applications are perhaps more likely than most to be
affected by the "decentralizing" and "distributed" modern
trends in application architectureprecisely because the Java
languages strong object-orientation, high performance, and
multi-platform capabilities are suited to large-scale systems, and
because the Java platform provides so much rich functionality
at so many levels and in so many problem domains. The
importance of microservices to the Java community is reflected
by, for example, the MicroProfile initiative, spearheaded by
companies other than Oracle; the rise of Java frameworks
suitable for easy spin-up of RESTful services, such as Spring
Boot, Lagom, and WildFly Swarm; the growing popularity of
shared-little architectures (e.g. 12-factor) and programming
models (both functional and actor-oriented); and (as of two days
ago) increased support for microservices in Java EE 8.
Developers interest in microservices has been growing over the
past year. In August 2015, 10% of our respondents were using
microservices; in January 2016, 24% were using microservices
somewhere in their organization; in a report just published
by Lightbend, 30% are using microservices in production;
and, in our latest survey, 39% of developers are currently
using microservices, and another 19% are planning to adopt
microservices in the next 12 months.

6. RANK HOW MUCH YOU TRUST THE

FOLLOWING DRIVERS/STEWARDS OF THE JAVA
LANGUAGE/PLATFORM.
Java more than any other language or platform has tested
the relation between a programming language and its users.
No other language has formalized a community-driven
improvement process as thoroughly as the JCP (whatever its
faults); no other platform has exposed APIs whose legal status
has been addressed by multi-billion dollar lawsuits. Developers
trust in the stewards and drivers of Java is therefore essential to
the health of the community and the technology ecosystem.
In light of recent concerns about Oracles commitment to Java
(some spurred by an ever more sluggish JCP, others by simple
radio silence), it is encouraging to see that, after the Java
development community as a whole (which is of course the
most trusted steward by far), Oracle comes in (a distant) second
place, significantly ahead of the JCP, although negligibly ahead of
current (2012+) Java Champions. (Answer options are ranked by
sum of weighted scores: because the question included 9 answer
options, a first-place ranking of option o adds 9 points to os total,
second-place ranking adds 8 points to os total, etc.)

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

See Your Users as People

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DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Understand the impact of change

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Five Tips to Effectively

Monitor Application
Performance and User
Experience
When implementing an application performance monitoring
strategy it can be tempting to just grab some tools and start
using them. This can ultimately lead to choosing one or more
disparate tools that are not integrated or holistic in their
approach. Too many tools and too much data can actually lead
to not enough insight into what is really going on with your
apps or your users experience. Here are five tips for success.
First, understand all of your customers. Monitor apps across
mobile, web and wearables and include synthetic monitoring to
find and fix problems even at times where you have no users.
Leverage passive monitoring when security or other concerns
prohibit direct end-user monitoring.

app to APIs, security layers, middleware all the way to the backend. Make sure your monitoring covers the same ground.
Third, get continuous feedback across DevOps by integrating
monitoring across all parts of the SDLC. This is as much
cultural as it is technical. Collaboration across Dev and Ops is
critical to delivering great user experiences.
Fourth, understand how changes impact performance. Being
able to roll back time to see what changed before an issue helps
you find patient zero and resolve problems faster.

Too many tools and too much data can

actually lead to not enough insight into
what is really going on with your apps.
Finally, simplify the complex! Modern apps can have a lot going
on under the covers. Views and perspectives that remove layers
of complexity help you see what is important more clearly,
without a distracting data deluge.
Consider these tips and youll be more successful in managing
the performance of your applications - and help keep your
customers happy.

Second, make sure you can follow transactions from front-end

to back-end. Transactions can cover a lot of ground from your

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DZONE.COM/GUIDES

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

The Java 8
API Design
Principles

QUICK VIEW
Learn to be a better Java
programmer by mastering Java 8
API design and:
Expose a well designed API
and hide the implementation
details
Make sure that client code can
use lamdas
Ensure that the API can evolve
in a controlled way
Get rid of all those nasty
NullPointerExceptions

BY PER MINBORG
CTO AT SPEEDMENT, INC.

Anyone that writes Java code is an API

designer! It does not matter if the coders
share their code with others or not, the code
is still used; either by others, by themselves or
both. Thus, it becomes important for all Java
developer to know the fundamentals of good
API design.
A good API design requires careful thinking and a lot
of experience. Luckily, we can learn from other clever
people like Ference Mihaly, whose blog post inspired me
to write this Java 8 API addendum. We relied heavily on
his checklist when we designed the Speedment API. (I
encourage you all to read his guide.)
Getting it right from the start is important because once
an API is published, a firm commitment is made to the
people who are supposed to use it. As Joshua Block once
said: Public APIs, like diamonds, are forever. You have
one chance to get it right, so give it your best. A well
designed API combines the best of two worlds, a firm
and precise commitment combined with a high degree of
implementation flexibility, eventually benefiting both the
API designers and the API users.
Why use a checklist? Getting the API right (i.e. defining
the visible parts of a collection of Java classes) can be
much harder than writing the implementation classes that
makes up the actual work behind the API. It is really an art
that few people master. Using a checklist allows the reader
to avoid the most obvious mistakes, become a better
programmer and save a lot of time.

10

API designers are strongly encouraged to put themselves

in the client code perspective and to optimize that view
in terms of simplicity, ease-of-use, and consistency
rather than thinking about the actual API implementation.
At the same time, they should try to hide as many
implementation details as possible.

DO NOT RETURN null TO INDICATE THE ABSENCE

OF A VALUE
Arguably, inconsistent null handling (resulting in the
ubiquitous NullPointerException) is the single largest
source of Java applications errors historically. Some
developers regard the introduction of the null concept
as one of the worst mistakes ever made in the computer
science domain. Luckily, the first step of alleviating Javas
null handling problem was introduced in Java 8 with the
advent of the Optional class. Make sure a method that
can return a no-value returns an Optional instead of null.
This clearly signals to the API users that the method may
or may not return a value. Do not fall for the temptation to
use null over Optional for performance reasons. Java 8s
escape analysis will optimize away most Optional objects
anyway. Avoid using Optionals in parameters and fields.
DO THIS:
public Optional<String> getComment() {
return Optional.ofNullable(comment);
}
DONT DO THIS:
public String getComment() {
return comment; // comment is nullable
}

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DO NOTUSE ARRAYS TO PASS VALUES TO AND

FROM THE API
A significant API mistake was made when the Enum concept
was introduced in Java 5. We all know that an Enum class
has a method called values() that returns an array of
all the Enums distinct values. Now, because the Java
framework must ensure that the client code cannot change
the Enums values (for example, by directly writing to
the array), a copy of the internal array must be produced
for each call to the value() method. This results in poor
performance and also poor client code usability. If the Enum
would have returned an unmodifiable List, that List could
be reused for each call and the client code would have had
access to a better and more useful model of the Enums
values. In the general case, consider exposing a Stream, if
the API is to return a collection of elements. This clearly
states that the result is read-only (as opposed to a List
which has a set() method). It also allows the client code to
easily collect the elements in another data structure or act
on them on-the-fly. Furthermore, the API can lazily produce
the elements as they become available (e.g. are pulled in
from a file, a socket, or from a database). Again, Java 8s
improved escape analysis will make sure that a minimum
of objects are actually created on the Java heap. Do not
use arrays as input parameters for methods either, since
thisunless a defensive copy of the array is mademakes
it possible for another thread to modify the content of the
array during method execution.
DO THIS:

of the API (e.g. put the Point interface in com.company.

product.shape and the implementations in com.company.
product.internal.shape).
DO THIS:
Point point = Point.of(1,2);
DONT DO THIS:
Point point = new PointImpl(1,2);

FAVOR COMPOSITION WITH FUNCTIONAL

INTERFACES AND LAMBDAS OVER INHERITANCE
For good reasons, there can only be one super class for
any given Java class. Furthermore, exposing abstract
or base classes in your API that are supposed to be
inherited by client code is a very big and problematic
API commitment. Avoid API inheritance altogether, and
instead consider providing static interface methods that
take one or several lambda parameters and apply those
given lambdas to a default internal API implementation
class. This also creates a much clearer separation of
concerns. For example, instead of inheriting from a public
API class AbstractReader and overriding abstract void
handleError(IOException ioe), it is better to expose
a static method or a builder in the Reader interface that
takes a Consumer<IOException> and applies it to an
internal generic ReaderImpl.
DO THIS:
Reader reader = Reader.builder()
.withErrorHandler(IOException::printStackTrace)

public Stream<String> comments() {

.build();

return Stream.of(comments);
}

DONT DO THIS:

DONT DO THIS:
public String[] comments() {
return comments; // Exposes the backing array!
}

CONSIDER ADDING STATIC INTERFACE METHODS

TO PROVIDE A SINGLE ENTRY POINT FOR OBJECT
CREATION
Avoid allowing the client code to directly select an
implementation class of an interface. Allowing client code to
create implementation classes directly creates a much more
direct coupling of the API and the client code. It also makes
the API commitment much larger, since now we have to
maintain all the implementation classes exactly as they can
be observed from outside instead of just committing to the
interface as such. Consider adding static interface methods,
to allow the client code to create (potentially specialized)
objects that implement the interface. For example, if we
have an interface Point with two methods int x() and
int y(), then we can expose a static method Point.of(int
x, int y) that produces a (hidden) implementation of the
interface. So, if x and y are both zero, we can return a special
implementation class PointOrigoImpl (with no x or y
fields), or else we return another class PointImpl that holds
the given x and y values. Ensure that the implementation
classes are in another package that are clearly not a part

11

Reader reader = new AbstractReader() {

@Override
public void handleError(IOException ioe) {
ioe. printStackTrace();
}
};

ENSURE THAT YOU ADD THE @FunctionalInterface

ANNOTATION TO FUNCTIONAL INTERFACES
Tagging an interface with the @FunctionalInterface
annotation signals that API users may use lambdas to
implement the interface, and it also makes sure the
interface remains usable for lambdas over time by
preventing abstract methods from accidently being added
to the API later on.
DO THIS:
@FunctionalInterface
public interface CircleSegmentConstructor {
CircleSegment apply(Point cntr, Point p, double ang);
}

// abstract methods cannot be added

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DONT DO THIS:

DO THIS:
public interface Line {
Point start();

public interface CircleSegmentConstructor {

Point end();
int length();

CircleSegment apply(Point cntr, Point p, double ang);

}
// abstract methods may be accidently added later

DONT DO THIS:

public interface Line {

Point start();
Point end();

AVOID OVERLOADING METHODS WITH

FUNCTIONAL INTERFACES AS PARAMETERS
If there are two or more functions with the same

default int length() {

int deltaX = start().x() - end().x();
int deltaY = start().y() - end().y();
return (int) Math.sqrt(

name that take functional interfaces as parameters,

deltaX * deltaX + deltaY * deltaY

then this would likely create a lambda ambiguity on

);

the client side. For example, if there are two Point

methods add(Function<Point, String> renderer) and

add(Predicate<Point> logCondition) and we try to

call point.add(p -> p + lambda) from the client
code, the compiler is unable to determine which method
to use and will produce an error. Instead, consider naming
methods according to their specific use.
DO THIS:
public interface Point {
addRenderer(Function<Point, String> renderer);
addLogCondition(Predicate<Point> logCondition);
}
DONT DO THIS:
public interface Point {
add(Function<Point, String> renderer);
add(Predicate<Point> logCondition);
}

AVOID OVERUSINGDEFAULTMETHODS
ININTERFACES
Default methods can easily be added to interfaces and

ENSURE THAT THE API METHODS CHECK THE

PARAMETER INVARIANTS BEFORE THEY ARE
ACTED UPON
Historically, people have been sloppy in making sure to
validate method input parameters. So, when a resulting
error occurs later on, the real reason becomes obscured
and hidden deep down the stack trace. Ensure that
parameters are checked for nulls and any valid range
constrains or preconditions before the parameters are
ever used in the implementing classes. Do not fall for the
temptation to skip parameter checks for performance
reasons. The JVM will be able to optimize away redundant
checking and produce efficient code. Make use of the
Objects.requireNonNull() method. Parameter checking
is also an important way to enforce the APIs contract. If
the API was not supposed to accept nulls but did anyhow,
users will become confused.
DO THIS:
public void addToSegment(Segment segment, Point point) {
Objects.requireNonNull(segment);

sometimes it makes sense to do that. For example,

Objects.requireNonNull(point);

a method that is expected to be the same for any

implementing class and that is short and fundamental
in its functionality, is a viable candidate for a default
implementation. Also, when an API is expanded, it
sometimes makes sense to provide a default interface
method for backward compatibility reasons. As we all
know, functional interfaces contain exactly one abstract

segment.add(point);
}
DONT DO THIS:
public void addToSegment(Segment segment, Point point) {
segment.add(point);
}

method, so default methods provide an escape hatch

when additional methods must be added. However, avoid
having the API interface evolve to an implementation
class by polluting it with unnecessary implementation
concerns. If in doubt, consider moving the method
logic to a separate utility class and/or place it in the
implementing classes.

12

PER MINBORG has been a Java Developer since Java 1.0 and runs
a popular Java blog and the open-source project Speedment, which
is a tool for accelerating development and execution performance
of Java database applications. Per is a DZone MVB and has also
held numerous presentations on various Java topics, for example at
JavaOne in San Francisco and at other larger Java events.

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Project
Jigsaw Is
Coming

QUICK VIEW
01

Java 9 brings modularity

to the language.

02

Modules are like JARs but

come with a descriptor
that defines a name,
dependencies, and an API.

03

Two basic rules, readability

and accessibility, build
on that and allow reliable
configuration, strong
encapsulation, improved
performance, security,
maintenance, and more.

04

Migration will not be

without challenges and
should be well prepared.

BY NICOLAI PARLOG
FREELANCER AT CODEFX

Java 9 is coming! Its just nine more months to

its release, so this is a good time to familiarize
ourselves with it. There are a couple of
interesting new features, like Javas REPL
(a.k.a. JShell), the additions to the Stream
and Optional APIs, support for HTTP 2.0, and
more. But they are all overshadowed by Java 9s
flagship feature: Project Jigsaw, which will bring
artifact-level modularity to the language.
Lets have a look at it!
(All unattributed quotes come from the excellent State of the
Module System.)

CREATING MODULES

But how does the module declaration work, and how do the
compiler and JVM interpret it?
(By the way, I assume reading compiler and JVM is as tiring as
writing it, so I will forego some precision and use Java instead.)

MODULE DECLARATION
As stated above, a module declaration defines a modules name,
dependencies, and API. It is usually defined in module-info.java
and looks like this:
module MODULE_NAME {
requires OTHER_MODULE_NAME;
requires YET_ANOTHER_MODULE_NAME;
exports PACKAGE_NAME;
exports OTHER_PACKAGE_NAME;
exports YET_ANOTHER_PACKAGE_NAME;
}

Lets examine the three properties one by one.

In Java 9 we will have the possibility to create modules. But

what exactly is a module? Its much like a regular artifact (most
commonly a JAR) but it has three additional properties, which it
explicitly expresses:
a name
dependencies
a well-defined API

This information is encoded in a module descriptor (in the

form of module-info.class), which is compiled from a module
declaration (module-info.java). The module descriptor defines
the three properties stated above and well see in a minute
how it does that.
After creating the module-info.java we (and in the future, our
tools) have to compile it to module-info.class and then package
it together with the rest of our source files. The result is a modular

13

JAR. At runtime, the JVM will read the classes and resources along
with module-info.class and turn it all into a module.

NAME
A modules name can be arbitrary, but to ensure uniqueness, it
is recommended to stick with the inverse-URL naming schema
for packages. Guava, for example, will likely be com.google.
guava, and Apache Commons IO could be either org.apache.
commons.commons_io or org.apache.commons.io.

While this is not necessary, it will often lead to the module

name being a prefix of the packages it contains.
DEPENDENCIES
A module lists the other modules it depends on to compile
and run by naming them in requires clauses. This is true for
application and library modules, but also for modules in the JDK
itself, which was split up into about 80 of them (have a look at
them with java -listmods).

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API
By default, all types are internal to the module and not visible
outside of it. But surely some types should be visible to the outside,
right? Yes, and this is done by exporting the packages that contain
these types with the exports clause. Other code, and even
reflection, can only access public types in exported packages.

JAR HELL AND OTHER NICETIES

That is all nice and dandy but why do we need it? Well,
there are some deep-seated problems with how Java
handles artifacts.
Before Project Jigsaw, Java sees JARs as simple containers for
compiled classes without any meaningful representation at
compile or run time. It simply rips all of the classes it has to
access out of their JARs and rolls them into one big ball of
mud. The JARs themselves, left behind on the class path, are
meaningless, and it does not matter at all how many there are
and how they are structured. For all Java cares, there might just
as well only be a single JAR.
This has a couple of negative consequences, and some of them
are notable contributors to JAR Hell:
Dependencies between artifacts can not be expressed,

which means that many problems lead to runtime errors

and crashing applications (NoClassDefFoundError anyone?).
Loading classes requires linear scans of the class path.
If there are several classes with the same fully qualified

name, the first one found during the scan will be loaded
and will shadow the others.
There is no way to reliably run an application that depends

on two versions of the same library (usually as transitive

dependencies via other libraries it needs).
There is no way to have code that is only visible inside a JAR.
Security-relevant code cannot be made accessible to some

JARs but hidden from others.

These problems can cause all kinds of trouble, like bad
performance, lacking security, maintenance nightmares, and
anything from too-subtle-to-notice misbehavior to havocwreaking errors. Hence, lots of tools and mechanisms were
devised to tackle some problem or other from our list: build
tools, web servers, component systems, Javas very own security
manager, fiddling with class loaders, and so on. These generally
work, but not without adding their own complexity and potential
for errors. Sometimes considerable amounts of it!
It would be so much better if Java itself would have an
understanding of artifacts

MODULARITY WITH PROJECT JIGSAW

Enter Project Jigsaw! It was specifically designed to provide a
solution to these problems. At the core of that solution are the
modules that we already looked at and three other concepts:
module graph

strong encapsulation
improved security, maintainability, and performance

MODULE GRAPH
The information contained in module descriptors gives Java the
ability to actually understand whats going on between modules.
So, instead of the big ball of mud it created before, it can now
map how they relate to each other.

More precisely, it builds a graph where the modules are nodes

and where the dependencies (expressed by the requires
clauses) are edges. Fittingly, this is called the Module Graph.
READABILITY
Directly based on this graph is the concept of Readability:

When one module depends directly upon another in the module

graph, then code in the first module will be able to refer to types
in the second module. We therefore say that the first module
reads the second or, equivalently, that the second module is
readable by the first.
RELIABLE CONFIGURATION

Readability is the basis of reliable configuration:

The readability relationships defined in a module

graph are the basis of reliable configuration: The
module system ensures that every dependence
is fulfilled by precisely one other module, that the
module graph is acyclic, that every module reads
at most one module defining a given package, and
that modules defining identically-named packages
do not interfere with each other.
So expressing and understanding dependencies means that a
lot of the problems that used to crash an application can now be
found at launch or even compile time!
IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

Readability also helps to improve performance. The module

system now knows for any given class which module is
supposed to contain it and can thus forego the repeated linear
scans. And with clearer bounds of where code is used, existing
byte-code optimization techniques can be used more effectively.
As JSR 376 puts it:

Many ahead-of-time, whole-program optimization

techniques can be more effective when it is known
that a class can refer only to classes in a few other
specific components rather than to any class
loaded at run time.
It might also be possible to index annotated classes so that they
can be found without a full class path scan.

readability

ACCESSIBILITY

accessibility

Together with readability, the exports clauses are the basis for
Accessibility:

Together they want to achieve the projects goals, most notably

among them:

14

reliable configuration

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The Java compiler and virtual machine consider the public

types in a package in one module to be accessible by code in
some other module only when the first module is readable by
the second module, in the sense defined above, and the first
module exports that package.
STRONG ENCAPSULATION
What happens if code tries to access a type that does not fulfill
these requirements?

A type referenced across module boundaries that

is not accessible in this way is unusable in the same
way that a private method or field is unusable: Any
attempt to use it will cause an error to be reported
by the compiler, or an IllegalAccessError to
be thrown by the Java virtual machine, or an
IllegalAccessException to be thrown by the
reflective run-time APIs. Thus, even when a type
is declared public, if its package is not exported
in the declaration of its module then it will only be
accessible to code in that module.
This means that public is no longer public! It also means that
modules will be able to hide their internals and clearly define
the parts of their functionality that make up their public API.
Mark Reinhold, spec lead on Project Jigsaw, once wrote about this:

A class that is private to a module should be

private in exactly the same way that a private field
is private to a class.
It might take some time to get used to public no longer
meaning public for everyone but public for everyone in this
module. I am convinced that this is worth it, though, as it
finally allows us to create a safe zone within a module.
IMPROVED SECURITY AND MAINTAINABILITY
The strong encapsulation of module-internal APIs greatly
improves security and maintainability. It helps with security
because critical code is now effectively hidden from code which
does not require to use it. It makes maintenance easier as a
modules public API can more easily be kept small.

BIRTH PAINS
But not all is well
MIGRATION CHALLENGES
Besides the core features we just discussed, Jigsaw entails a
lot of changes under the hood. While almost all of them are
backwards compatible in the strict meaning of the word, some
interact badly with existing code bases. In the end, whether you
modularize your application or not, running on Java 9 may break
your code.

A couple of things that could cause trouble:

Your (or, more likely, your dependencies) could depend

on the JDK-internal API, which will soon be inaccessible

thanks to strong encapsulation. See JEP 260 for details
about which APIs will disappear. Also, have a look at
jdeps and run jdeps -jdkinternals <jars> on your and
your dependencies artifacts.

15

The JVM will refuse to launch when two modules contain

packages with the same name (known as split package). If

a module and a regular JAR split a package, the content of
the JARs package would not be visible at all.
The JRE/JDK layout changed:

rt.jar and tools.jar no longer exist

JDK modules are packed as JMODs, a new and
deliberately unspecified format
there is no longer a folder jre in the JDK
the URLs for runtime content look different
Class loaders are no longer always URLClassLoader-s, so

casts to that type will fail.

The Endorsed Standards Override Mechanism, Extension

Mechanism, and Boot Class Path Override are gone.

More possible problems are listed under Risks and Assumptions in
JEP 261.
WHAT ABOUT VERSION CONFLICTS?
Unfortunately, the module system has no understanding of
versions. It will see two different versions of the same module
as a duplication and refuse to compile or launch. The fact that
the module system does nothing to ameliorate version conflicts
is, frankly, somewhat disappointing, and I believe we might
soon be talking about module hell.
CONTESTED TOPICS
These are some of the questions currently being discussed on
the Jigsaw mailing list:
Should strong encapsulation be stronger than reflection?
Do we need optional dependencies?
Should modules be able to stand in for other modules

(by aliasing)?
Is it helpful that a module can make its dependencies

available to other modules?

If these open questions or other details of Jigsaw interest you,

make sure to check the mailing list archives or even participate
in the discussion.

SUMMARY
The most important takeaway is that Jigsaw introduces
modules: JARs with a module descriptor that gives them names,
explicit dependencies, and a well-defined API. The module
graph, readability, and accessibility build on these descriptors to
tackle JAR hell and other existing problems as well as to provide
reliable configuration, strong encapsulation, and improved
security, maintainability, and performance. But Jigsaw will make
some migrations to Java 9 daunting and is also being criticized
for a number of shortcomingsperceived or real.
To see for yourself, download JDK 9, play around with itmaybe
by following my hands-on guide and try to judge or even spike
your codes migration.
NICOLAI PARLOG is the editor of SitePoints Java channel,
writes a book about Project Jigsaw, blogs about software
development on codefx.org, and is a long-tail contributor to several
open source projects. You can hire him for all kinds of things.

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Java-based apps that use
language, vision, speech
and data insight APIs.

Program faster, better, easier.

Learn more about the advantages of moving from a monolithic to

microservices architecture.

ibm.com/java

16

Copyright IBM Corporation 2016. IBM, the IBM logo, Bluemix and ibm.com are trademarks of International Business
Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other product and service names might be trademarks
of IBM or other companies. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at Copyright and trademark
information at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.

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SPONSORED OPINION

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Understand the
What, Why and
How of Using
Microservices

drastically reduce the overhead involved in making changes

as well as the risk involved with trying something new.
But before you embark on a new project using a microservices
architecture, there are factors you need to consider. For
example, how you will manage your data, ensure your apps
are secure, leverage logging and metrics to maintain a
healthy infrastructure, and more. Together with WAS Liberty,
IBM has created a library of resources with information on
how to get started, best practices, and methodologies.

Application architecture patterns are changing, a result of

the convergence of factors that has led to the concept of
cloud native applications. General availability of cloud
computing platforms, advancements in virtualization, and
the emergence of agile and DevOps practices have helped to
streamline and shorten release cycles. Two-week roll outs for
new functionality is simply too long for todays on-demand
business world. This is the challenge that microservices, the
cloud native application architecture, is trying to address.

Separating the bits of an application

into pieces can be very freeing.
Seeing is believing. Thats why IBM and WAS Liberty
developed an app to give developers a fuller picture of
what a microservices application should look like. Game
On! is a throwback text-based adventure built to help you
explore microservices architectures and related concepts. It
demonstrates the key aspects of microservice architectures,
and it is infinitely extensible in a creative and fun way.

Microservices empower developers to program faster, better,

and more easily. Separating the bits of an application into
pieces can be very freeing. The ability to isolate each piece can

WRITTEN BY ERIN SCHNABEL

SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER, IBM

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

IBM Bluemix By IBM

IBM Bluemix is a cloud platform, built on open source, and offering
flexible support for developers
CATEGORY

NEW RELEASES

OPEN SOURCE

STRENGTHS

Cloud, PaaS, IaaS

Continuous

Yes

Built on Cloud Foundry, supports OpenStack,

Node, Docker & more

Over 150 services across Watson, data, mobile,

CASE STUDY
The KLM Open, one of the oldest golf tournaments in the
European Tour, attracts an average of 45,000 visitors and
wanted to provide fans with a new and more interactive mobile
application but lacked the infrastructure and expertise needed
to develop and deploy such a solution. Turning to IBMs Bluemix

IoT, and DevOps

Spans bare metal to serverless programming
Delivered as public, dedicated, and on-premises

deployment model

platform, which combines the power of IBM SoftLayer, IBM

MobileFirst Platform, and IBM WebSphere Application Server
Liberty, they were able to deliver a new mobile application
that helped improve the live experience for fans with mobile

PayPal

WhatsApp

GitHub

downloads in three days and a 25% increase in mobile usage rate

GameStop

Apple

Acccenture

by fans during the tournament.

Tumblr

Tata

access to real-time tournament information, resulting in 7,500

BLOG developer.ibm.com/wasdev/blog

17

NOTABLE CUSTOMERS

TWITTER @IBMBluemix
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QUICK VIEW

REACTIVE MICROSERVICES:

Driving Application
Modernization Efforts
BY MARKUS EISELE

01

Traditional enterprises are

forced to rethink how they build
applications because of rapidly
changing use-cases and new
requirements.

02

Isolation, Single Responsibility,

Autonomy, Exclusive State,
Asynchronous Message-Passing,
and Mobility are required to
build out a reactive microservice
architecture.

03

Reactive Principles provide

the coherent approach
to Microservices systems
architecture.

DEVELOPER ADVOCATE AT LIGHTBEND, INC.

Even today, after almost two solid years,

microservices are still one of the emerging topics
in enterprises. With the challenges coming with
a rising number of consumers and changing use
cases for customers, microservices provide a
more stable and less cost intensive way to build
applications. Though this isnt the first time
evolving technologies have shocked the well-oiled
machine of software to its core, microservices
adoption truly forces traditional enterprises to
re-think what theyve been doing for almost two
decades. Weve seen design paradigms change
over time and project management methodologies
evolve. But this time it looks like the influence is far
bigger than anything weve seen before. And the
interesting part is that microservices arent new
from the core.
A core skill of software architects is understanding
modularization and components in software and designing
appropriate dependencies between them. We've already
learned how to couple services and build them around
organizational capabilities, and its in looking beyond those
binary dependencies, that exciting part of microservicesbased architectures comes into play how independent
microservices are distributed and connected back together.
Building an individual service is easy with all technologies.
Building a system out of many is the real challenge because
it introduces us to the problem space of distributed systems.

18

This is a major difference from classical, centralized

infrastructures. As a result, there are very few concepts from
the old world which still fit into a modern architecture.

MICROSERVICES IN A REACTIVE WORLD

Up to now, the usual way to describe distributed systems
has been to use a mix of technical and business buzzwords:
asynchronous, non-blocking, real-time, highly-available,
loosely coupled, scalable, fault-tolerant, concurrent,
message-driven, push instead of pull, distributed, low
latency, high throughput, etc. The Reactive Manifesto
brought all these characteristics together, and it defines
them through four high-level traits: Responsive, Resilient,
Elastic, and Message driven.
Even if it looks like this describes an entirely new
architectural pattern, the core principles have long been
known in industries that require real-time IT systems,
such as financial trading. If you think about a systems
composed out of individual services, you will quickly
realize how closely the Reactive world is related to
microservices. Let's explore the four main characteristics
of a Reactive microservices system closer.

RESPONSIVE
A responsive application satisfies the consumers
expectations in terms of availability and real-time
responses. Responsiveness is measured in latency, which
is the time between request and response. Especially with
many small requests by mobile or internet-connected
devices, a microservices-based architecture can achieve
this using the right design.

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RESILIENT
A very high-quality service performs its function without
any downtime at all. But failures do happen, and handling
and recovering from the failure of an individual service
in a gentle way without affecting the complete system
is what the term resiliency describes. While monolithic
applications need to be recovered completely and handling
failures mostly comes down to proprietary infrastructure
components, individual microservices can easily provide
these features, for example by supervision.
ELASTIC
A successful service will need to be scalable both up
and down in response to changes in the rate at which
the service is used. While monoliths usually are scaled
on a per server basis, the flexibility and elasticity that
comes with microservices has a much greater potential to
respond to changing workloads.
MESSAGE DRIVEN
And basically the only way to fulfill all the above
requirements is to have loosely coupled services with
explicit protocols communicating over messages.
Components can remain inactive until a message arrives,
freeing up resources while doing nothing. In order to
realize this, non-blocking and asynchronous APIs must be
provided that explicitly expose the systems underlying
message structure. While traditional frameworks (e.g.
Spring and Java EE) have very little to offer here, modern
approaches like Akka or Lagom are better equipped to help
implement these requirements.

ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPTS OF REACTIVE

MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURES
Becoming a good architect of microservice systems
requires time and experience. However, there are attempts
to guide your decision-making and experiences with
frameworks providing opinionated APIs, features, and
defaults. The following examples are built with the Lagom
framework. It provides tools and APIs that guide developers
to build systems out of microservices. The key to success
is good architecture, rooted in a solid understanding of
microservices concepts and best practices, and Lagom
encapsulates these for you to use in the form of APIs.

ISOLATION
It is not enough to build individual services. These
services also need to isolate their failures. Containing
and managing them without cascading throughout all the
services participating in a complete workflow is a pattern
referred to as bulkheading. This includes the ability to heal
from failure, which is called resilience. And this highly
depends on compartmentalization and containment of
failure. Isolation also makes it easier to scale services on

19

demand and also allows for monitoring, debugging, and

testing them independently.

AUTONOMY
Acting autonomously as a microservice also means
that those services can only promise their behavior by
publishing their protocols and APIs. And this gives a
great amount of flexibility around service orchestration,
workflow management, and collaborative behavior.
Through communication over well defined protocols,
autonomous services also add to resilience and elasticity.
Lagom services are described by an interface, known as a
service descriptor. This interface not only defines how the
service is invoked and implemented, it also defines the
metadata that describes how the interface is mapped down
onto an underlying transport protocol.
public interface HelloService extends Service {
ServiceCall<String, String> sayHello();

default Descriptor descriptor() {

return named("hello").withCalls(
call(this::sayHello)
);
}

Services are implemented by providing an implementation

of the service descriptor interface, implementing each call
specified by that descriptor.
public class HelloServiceImpl implements HelloService {

public ServiceCall<String, String> sayHello() {

return name -> completedFuture("Hello " + name);
}

SINGLE RESPONSIBILITY PRINCIPLE

One of the most pressing questions for microservices has
always been about size. What can be considered micro?
How big in terms of lines of code or jar-file size is the
optimal microservice? But these questions really arent at
the heart of the problem. Instead, micro should refer to
scope of responsibility. One of the best guiding principles
here is the Unix philosophy: let it do one thing, and do it
well. When you look at refactoring existing systems, it
will help to find a verb or noun as an initial description of
a microservice. If a service only has one single reason to
exist, providing a single composable piece of functionality,
then business domains and responsibilities are not
tangled. Each service can be made more generally useful,
and the system as a whole is easier to scale, make resilient,
understand, extend, and maintain.
EXCLUSIVE STATE
Microservices are often called stateful entities: they
encapsulate state and behavior, in a similar fashion to
an Object, and isolation most certainly applies to state
and requires that you treat state and behavior as a single

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unit. Just pushing the state down to a shared database

and calling it a stateless architecture isnt the solution.
Each microservice needs to take sole responsibility for
its own state and the persistence thereof. This opens
up possibilities for the most adequate persistence
technology, ranging from RDBMS to Event-Log driven
systems like Kafka. Abstracted techniques such as
Event Sourcing and Command Query Responsibility
Segregation (CQRS) serve as the persistence technology
for reactive microservices.
In Lagom, a PersistentEntity has a stable entity
identifier, with which it can be accessed from the service
implementation or other places. The state of an entity
is persistent using Event Sourcing. All state changes are
represented as events and those immutable facts are
appended to an event log. To recreate the current state of
an entity when it is started, all those events get replayed.
You interact with a PersistentEntity by sending
command messages to it. An entity stub can look like this:
public class Post
extends PersistentEntity<BlogCommand, BlogEvent,
BlogState> {
@Override
public Behavior initialBehavior(Optional<BlogState>
snapshotState) {
BehaviorBuilder b = newBehaviorBuilder(
snapshotState.orElse(BlogState.EMPTY));
// Command and event handler go here
return b.build();
}
}

The three type parameters of the extended

PersistentEntity class define: the Command, the super
class/interface of the commands; the Event, the super
class/interface of the events; and the State, the class of
the state.

ASYNCHRONOUS MESSAGE-PASSING
Communication between microservices needs to be
based on asynchronous message-passing.
Besides being the only effective help in isolating the

API for asynchronous computation. Furthermore, Lagom

makes asynchronous communication the default:
when communicating between services, streaming
is provided as a first-class concept. Developers are
encouraged and enabled to use asynchronous messaging
via streaming, rather than synchronous requestresponse communication. Asynchronous messaging is
fundamental to a system's resilience and scalability. A
streamed message is a message of type Source. Source
is an Akka streams API that allows asynchronous
streaming and handling of messages. Heres an example
streamed service call:

ServiceCall<String, Source<String, ?>> tick(int

interval);
default Descriptor descriptor() {
return named("clock").withCalls(
pathCall("/tick/:interval", this::tick)
);
}

MOBILITY
Another requirement for microservices is the ability
to run independent of the physical location. And
asynchronous message-passing provides the needed
decoupling, which is also called location transparency:
this gives the ability to, at runtime, dynamically scale the
microserviceeither on multiple cores or on multiple
nodeswithout changing the code. This kind of service
distribution is needed to take full advantage of cloud
computing infrastructures with microservices.
A successful microservices services architecture needs to be
designed with the core traits of Reactive Microservices in
mind. Isolation, Single Responsibility, Autonomy, Exclusive
State, Asynchronous Message-Passing, and Mobility are
required to build out a reactive microservice architecture.
The most interesting, rewarding, and challenging parts
take place when microservices collaborate and build a
complete system. This is the chance to learn from past
failures and successes in distributed systems and
microservices-based architectures.

individual services, the non-blocking execution and

Input/Output (IO) is most often more effective on
resources. Unfortunately, one of the most common
implementations of the REST architecture, REST over
HTTP, is widely considered the default microservices

You can learn even more about reactive microservice

architectures by reading Jonas Bonrs free OReilly book,
and you can get a deep-dive into Lagom with my own
mini-book about implementing reactive microservices.

communication protocol. If youre looking into this,

you need to be aware that the implementations most
often are synchronous and as such not a suitable fit for
microservices as the default protocol. All Lagom APIs
use the asynchronous IO capabilities of Akka Stream for
asynchronous streaming and the JDK8 CompletionStage

20

MARKUS EISELE (@myfear) is a Java Champion, former Java

EE 7 Expert Group member, deputy lead for the Java community
at German DOAG, founder of JavaLand, reputed speaker at Java
conferences around the world, and a very well known figure in the
Enterprise Java world. He is a developer advocate at Lightbend.

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

7 HAB IT S O F

Super Productive Java Developers

The core engineering team at Stormpath has a combined 153 years of professional experience in Java,
so we surveyed them for their top advice, tips, and tricks. Heres what they had to say:

1. KNOW YOUR TOOLS (AND HAVE THE RIGHT ONES)

Thoroughly research the existing frameworks or libraries that could
make your implementation easier before you begin. Also, have the
right IDE and customize it for your project. Beyond the Java-specific
toolkit, our developers deploy a veritable battalion of apps and
services to increase their productivity:
CROSS-PLATFORM, OR PLATFORM-AGNOSTIC

Private Internet Access: Easy VPN service (great for hotels and
public networks)
Franz: One chat app to rule them all! Franz supports Slack, Hipchat,
Facebook Messenger, GChat, Whatsapp, and Telegram (and many
others)
RecordIt: Multimedia recorder that turns quick screencasts into
animated gifs
JWT Inspector: Decode, inspect, and debug JWTs from cookies,
local storage, and requests, straight from your browser with this
Chrome extension, by Stormpath

Take breaks. For real. Get up and walk away from your computer, think
about something other than work. Apps like Pause can help force your
brain to disengage from work and slow down.
5. AUTOMATE WHERE POSSIBLE
Scripts are your friend. Take the time to automate your repetitive tasks, even
the simple ones. Those saved seconds add up, and can eliminate errors.
6. DONT STAY STUCK
Start by not being afraid to spike and delete: Try out different approaches
and explore not just their impact on your project and interaction with
existing code, but also where you get stuck. Then, delete that and write
some tests.

Dont be afraid to ask questions on Stack Overflow or pair up with a friend

or colleague. Getting a second set of eyes on your problem can get you
unstuck in a fraction of the time.

Bartender: Tame the Mac menu bar

Karabiner: Keyboard customizer
Be Focused Pro: Pomodoro technique timer for the menu bar

OPEN A BOOK!

Alfred: Enhanced Spotlight functionality (and a lot more)

Jumpcut: Indispensable clipboard buffering app
Riverflow: Workflow manager that assigns unique two-finger
gestures to actions

2. WRITE TESTS FIRST

It sounds counterintuitive, but by thinking ahead to your testing youll
end up writing testable code.
3. LOVE THAT HTTPIE
Forget curl; httpie is where its at, so learn to love the command
line. This Swiss Army knife for developers is quite possibly the most
powerful tool in your arsenal, and the most frequently overlooked.

21

GET UP AND MOVE

USE YOUR TEAM

FOR MAC

4. BE PROACTIVE ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY

Productivity hacks abound, and we recommend you to devote some time
to trying a few out to find the one that best suits your workflow.

There are some amazing general and Java-specific reference texts

on the Stormpath bookshelves that can, and have, gotten our team
unstuck a time or two. These include Effective Java, Simple Java, Clean
Code, and Design Patterns.
7. PAY IT FORWARD
Stormpath co-founder Les Hazlewood is also the founder and primary
contributor to the open-source Java security framework Apache Shiro.
He offers this advice: Participate (actually code) in some great open
source projects. A *lot*. As much as you can. There is simply nothing in
the world that I know of that will expose you to the quantity and quality
of great code written by senior developers than participating in multiple
solid open source projects. You will learn more by looking at clean code
and good design patterns than anything you could do on your own or
what you would see by working on a few closed-source projects.

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

The Elements
Of Modern
Java Style
BY MICHAEL TOFINETTI

QUICK VIEW
01

Code style is an important

aspect of software
development.

02

When done consistently and

correctly, code style can
help improve the quality
of software by increasing
readability and the ability to
discover potential defects
earlier in development.

03

Conventions include basic

code formatting, how to
name objects and variables,
as well as following
consistent design patterns.

DEVELOPMENT TEAM LEAD AT ROGUE WAVE SOFTWARE

CODE STYLE AND HOW TO USE IT

PRINCIPLES OF MODERN JAVA STYLE

Compilers and interpreters require the syntax

The most important aspect of style is simplicity, since the

simpler the style the easier it is to remember and apply. No
developer wants to memorize hundreds of rules and dozens
of exception in order to write software.

of code to conform to a given programming

languages grammar. Humans, however, require
additional guides to translate the cold instructions
of machine code into something that can be
followed and understood. Code style can provide
these cues, and can include things like basic text
formatting, indentation, and small methods.
Style can also apply to the use of design patterns,
such as best practices for things like constructor
chaining, exception handling, and synchronization.
Well-styled code is easy to read, like well-written prose. And
easier-to-read code means it is easier to understand, and this
means more robust, error-free software that developers are
happy to work with.

22

There is an overall guiding principle that is commonly

known as "The Boy Scout Rule for Software Development".
This simply states that a developer should leave the code in
a better state than when they found it, much like Boy Scouts
and their creed to maintain camp sites.

HIGHLIGHTS OF CODING AND FORMATTING

CONVENTIONS
CODE FORMATTING

Formatting consists of all the typological conventions that

give code its basic appearance and includes indentation, the
use of comments, and where braces appear.
Some best practices:

Coding style also works best when it is consistent throughout

the whole codebase. Sometimes, however, many years of
development may exist where no style or minimal style is
applied. In these cases, it is best not to rush in and change
everything just for the sake of applying style. Apply changes
slowly as code changes, starting first with all new files. Then
update existing files only in those places that are changing,
such as a method due to a bug fix. And once a particular file
passes a threshold (such as 75%), the remaining non-styled
sections can be updated.

Nest code and use 4 spaces for indentation. This gives a good
trade-off between emphasizing the text indentation at each
level and does not push text too far into the line if multiple
indentations levels are required.

It is also important to note that modern IDEs allow for the

configuration of formatting rules; take advantage of this
assistance where available.

Break long lines and margins of 80, 120, or 132 characters.

80 is better for doing side-by-side comparison or multi-way
merges, but will lead to more wrapped lines.

Use spaces for indentation, never tab characters. Tabs

are visually indistinguishable from spaces and can cause
issues if both are mixed, since tab lengths can vary across
environments. Using only spaces ensure that indentation is
always consistent.

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Use white space, blank lines and comments to improve

readability.
BRACES

Braces have long since become a point of contention in any

discussion of coding style. There are two main schools of
thought on braces: Cozied and Aligned. Each has its own pros
and cons, which are explained below.
Cozied Braces put the open brace right at the end of the
originating statement and the closing brace on its own line.
Associated keywords (like else to an if) cozy up to the end
brace on the same line.
This style allows for reducing
the amount of vertical space
used by the code, showing
more code on the screen at a
time. However, compacting information in this way can
reduce readability.
if (condition) {
statement;
} else {
statement;
}

A short, single character is appropriate for a self-contained loop:

for (int i = 0; i < listSize; i++)
{
if (condition)
{
sum += list.getItemAt(i);
}
}

Larger-scoped variables require longer and more descriptive names:

private CommandProcessor sequentialCommandProcessor =
new CommandProcessor();

This variable may be used throughout the class in various

places, where each of the separate invocations are not
simultaneously visible on the editor screen at the same time.
sequentialCommandProcessor.init();
...
sequentialCommandProcessor.addCommand(...);
...
sequentialCommandProcessor.execute();

Aligned braces, alternatively, place the braces directly on top

of each other.
This style sets off statements
from the keywords
surrounding it by introducing
blank lines since each brace is
on its own line, instantly
improving readability. It also
introduces consistency in the
location of braces because they are always in the same place,
directly below the first character of the statement that
introduced them.
if (condition)
{
statement;
}
else
{
statement;
}

Aligned Braces are better for making the code consistent and
symmetrical, and this especially becomes obvious when the
statement before the first open brace is longer than a single line.

if (long condition with

keyword and keyword and
keyword and keyword)
{
keyword;
}

The cozied brace version of

the above requires an
additional indentation to
differentiate the continuation
of the condition with the start
of the execution block.

When using Aligned Braces, the formatting automatically

aligns the text blocks, keeps the condition items together,
and does not require additional formatting rules or
indentation spaces.
It is for these reasons that Aligned Braces are preferred.
NAMING CONVENTIONS

Naming is an important part of code writing picking an

appropriate name that conveys meaning and is appropriate
for the scope and lifespan of the construct.
In general, it is better to be too descriptive than too terse, but
always consider the scope that the variable will exist in. Short
names are preferable in smaller scopes, while longer names
are more appropriate for longer-lived objects.

23

...
sequentialCommandProcessor.cleanUp();
...

Having a descriptive name reduces the time spent attempting

to figure out the intention of the variable.
As in the example above, longer variable names use Camel
Caps to join words, and never exclude vowels for brevity.
Acronyms should only have their first letter capitalized, such
as parseXml().
To maintain consistency across the code base, use the
following naming conventions:

Capitalize the first letter of Classes and Interfaces.

Start with a lower case letter for methodNames and
variableNames.
Constants are in all UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES.
Use single words in all lowercase for package names.

HIGHLIGHTS OF PROGRAMMING AND DESIGN

CONVENTIONS
Programming conventions cover aspects of implementation,
including items like Type Safety, Statements and Expressions,
Chaining Constructors, Exception Handling, Assertions,
Concurrency, Synchronization, and Efficiency.
Some general conventions:

Always use braces for block statements, even if they are

empty or a single line; this improves readability and prevents
issues if those code blocks are changed in the future.
Use parenthesis to clarify the order of operations.
Use polymorphism to reduce the need for switch
statements or the instanceof operator. instanceof is an
CONTINUED

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expensive operation and can lead to performance issues if

lang.OutOfMemoryError) with more reasonable expected

done repeatedly in a loop structure.

exceptions (such as java.lang.NumberFormatException

If using switch statements, always use a default: case

and put break; statements at the end of each block,
including the default.

when converting a String into an Integer).

SYNCHRONIZATION

Synchronization is the enforcement that only a single thread

shall have access to a particular portion of code or an object

CHAINING CONSTRUCTORS

Object construction occurs frequently, and often times with

various parameters to help simplify creation. The best practice
in this case is to not write duplicate code and instead make
each constructor do only the minimum work necessary,
passing the remaining processing to the other constructors.

at one moment. The most important rule of maintaining data

integrity in a threaded environment is to always allocate
and synchronize on an object that is used exclusively for
synchronization purposes. Java does provide a mechanism
to apply synchronization to classes or methods, but this
implicitly or explicitly uses the instance of the class object
itself as the synchronization object. That means that all
synchronized methods in the class will be blocked if a thread

public ChainedConstructor()
{
// Common setup
...
}

is locked in one of them.

As such, to prevent unintended consequences, always
use an Object other than the current object (this) as the
synchronization lock token.

public ChainedConstructor(ObjectTypeA a)
{
ChaintedConstrucor();
this.a = a;
}

private String fileLock = token;

public ChainedConstructor(ObjectTypeA a, ObjectTypeB b)

{
ChainedConstructor(a);
this.b = b;
}

EXCEPTION HANDLING

One of the most important things a developer can do is

ensure that the software never crashes, even in the event of
unexpected circumstances. At run-time, many things can
go wrong, from invalid user input to network interruptions.
It is for this reason that all potential exception cases must

public void writeDataFile(String data)

{
synchronized(fileLock)
{
dataFile.write(data);
}
}
public String readDataFile(int lineNumber)
{
String result;
synchronized(fileLock)
{
result = dataFile.read(lineNumber);
}
return result;
}

be handled.
At the very least, run-time exceptions should always be
logged. It is very rare that there is an exception that will truly
never occur and can be ignored.
try
{

slow down the execution of a code block, so only apply

synchronization where necessary to avoid thread collisions
or potential data corruption.

CONCLUSION

...

Code style is an important aspect of software development.

}
catch (IOException e)
{
// Should never reach here
logger.debug(Unexpected I/O exception:);
logger.logStackTrace(e);
}

Judiciously and consistently applying a well-defined style will

produce code that is simpler to read, understand, and debug,
and with fewer defects.

Catch exceptions in as small an exception scope as

possible. Do not wrap a try block around a section of
code and then only catch java.lang.Throwable. Some
exception cases are easier to recover from than others; it
is best not to lump non-recoverable errors (such as java.

24

Synchronization is an expensive operation that will

MICHAEL TOFINETTI received an Honours Bachelor of

Computer Science from Lakehead University and has worked in
software design and development for nearly twenty years, primarily
in the telecommunications industry. He has co-authored eight patents
(six issued, two pending), and is currently a Development Team
Lead for Rogue Wave Software working on the Klocwork static code
analysis tool in Ottawa, Canada.

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

SPONSORED OPINION

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Java or .NET?
Be TechnologyAgnostic with CrossPlatform Tools
With the proliferation of new platforms and languages,
developers are faced with the challenge of being technologyagnostic, whereby they must mix and match whatever
technologies are necessary to build the best possible system
or to satisfy the end user. Rather than insisting on the purity
of using a single platform or technology, the technologyagnostic developer selects parts of a solution from a wide
array of platforms and other technologies with the aim of
developing a superior or most suitable solution.
Consider the following scenario. A firm has spent years
implementing a trading platform in Java. At some point they
realize they must incorporate a best-of-breed quant package
thats been written in C#. Does the development team resolve
the problem by throwing away the C# library and rewriting it
in Java?

Enter an interoperability solution. In this case, the firm easily

and efficiently integrated the .NET-based quant API into their
Java-based trading platform, maintaining the solidity and
integrity of both code bases.
In another scenario, customers of a Java-based software
provider demanded a .NET-based API. Rather than adding the
time and expense to rewrite and maintain another set of code,
the software team used an interoperability tool to quickly
deliver a solution and make the sale.

The technology-agnostic developer selects

from a wide array of technologies in order
to build superior applications and systems.
Being technology-agnostic during the development process
allows you to choose the best overall solution regardless of the
underlying platform. Being technology-agnostic also allows
you to switch, rather than fight, when faced with adapting
a solution long after the original technology decisions were
made. Using interoperability tools helps you support your
evolving technology needs.

WRITTEN BY WAYNE CITRIN

CTO AT JNBRIDGE

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

JNBridgePro By JNBridge
Connect anything Java together with anything .NET.
Reuse your existing C#, VB or Java code, and run your applications anywhere.
CATEGORY
Java & .NET Interoperability

NEW RELEASES
Semi-Annual

OPEN SOURCE

STRENGTHS

No

Access Java classes from .NET as if Java were a .NET

language (C#, VB, etc.)

Access .NET classes (written in C#, VB, F#...) from Java as

CASE STUDY

if they were Java classes

A major financial institution that has spent years building up

their Java-based trading infrastructure needed to integrate a risk
engine API written in C#. They faced three choices: creating and
using a very complex workaround process to assess the risk in
each financial transaction (which would have cost significant
processing time), completely rewriting and debugging the entire
C# library in Java, or finding a way to make both sides work
together seamlessly. After exploring open-source applications
that didnt work, they chose JNBridgePro as the solution. Now, the
risk-evaluation process takes a fraction of the time it otherwise
would have, and the developers can instead focus on other
business-critical items on their to-do list.
BLOG jnbridge.com/blog

25

Gain full access to any API on the other side, whether its
service-enabled or not

Expose any Java or .NET binary, no source code required

Deploy anywhere: same process, separate processes,
separate devices, across a network

NOTABLE CUSTOMERS
Over 600 global enterprises and software development
houses rely on JNBridge products in all kinds of
applications, integrating Java with .NET across every
layer from the UI to the enterprise server backend. See
jnbridge.com/about/customers for details.

TWITTER @jnbridge
DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

WEBSITE jnbridge.com

DZONE.COM/GUIDES

26

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

SPONSORED OPINION

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Modernizing
Applications
Many companies are facing the problem of aging
applications that either dont support customers
platforms or dont have a fast enough time to market.
Web as a platform has already won the platform wars
as a platform everybody supports. Even mobile apps are
consolidating towards the web, with emerging browser
features and the ease of findability compared to installable
apps. Your technology stack however defines your time
to market developers can either solve business issues or
use their time on technical issues.
Java as the basis for your technology stack ensures that
your team can stay productive. The less technologies
your team has to juggle the easier it is to get new people

into your project or switch between different teams.

Managing competencies gets easier the less technologies
you have to master. If you already from before have a
Java-stack it makes sense to re-use as much as possible
of the UI and back-end logic. When deciding upon your
migration path, consider the amount of technologies
and languages you need to know. For instance Java over
JavaScript has many advantages in this respect. It also
makes for an easier migration when as much as possible
can be reused.
As important as the language, and thus the tools it
provides, is also the longevity of the framework you
migrate to. Even though history doesnt always give
promises about the future, having a solid back is worth a
lot when building for years to come. You want to ensure
your framework supports the platforms your future
customers will be using.
Check out the framework comparison matrix @
vaadin.com/comparison.
WRITTEN BY FREDRIK RNNLUND
VP OF MARKETING, VA ADIN

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Vaadin
Use a familiar component based approach to build awesome single page web apps faster than with any
other UI framework. Forget complex web technologies and just use Java or any other JVM language. No
plugins or installations required and it works from desktop to mobile.
CATEGORY

NEW RELEASES

OPEN SOURCE

STRENGTHS

Web UI Framework

Every 2 Weeks

Yes

One language for the whole application

CASE STUDY

Extensible with Java and HTML5

Simplifying the Development Model at CAS Software

UI logic is right next to your data

CAS Software GmbH in Germany switched to Vaadin Framework for their

main product in order to shave off development costs and get faster time
to market.

Half the lines of code, twice the productivity

Selecting the right tool for the company was imperative back in 2014 so

Open source and backed up by a strong company

they made a thorough comparison. During the evaluation phase several

technologies were evaluated, including Eclipse RAP, Vaadin, GWT and
Sencha/Ext JS. Vaadin was found to be the most solid technology and has
proven to be the right choice.

Spring and Java EE compatible

Supported for 15 years, 5 year support guarantee

"Vaadin enabled a highly economic assignment of tasks: the most of the application

NOTABLE CUSTOMERS

including the UI can be implemented by Java developers and only a few specialists

TNT

Nasa

Puma

Accenture

were needed to implement complex widgets."

- Dr. Markus Bauer, Head of Development Center SmartDesign, CAS Software AG

BLOG vaadin.com/blog

27

Strong abstraction of web technologies

TWITTER @vaadin
DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

CGI

WEBSITE vaadin.com

DZONE.COM/GUIDES

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

QUICK VIEW

12 Factors and
Beyond in Java
BY PIETER HUMPHREY PRINCIPAL PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER AT PIVOTAL
AND MARK HECKLER PRINCIPAL TECHNOLOGIST/DEVELOPER ADVOCATE AT PIVOTAL

For many people, cloud native and 12 factor

01

Be conservative when estimating

skills, knowledge of users, and
developers.

02

Establish a common
understanding between IT and
users of what the modernization
drivers are so project components
can be prioritized.

03

Keep business engaged and

momentum up by following an
incremental approach.

04

Look for opportunities to reuse

the tested, working code in
production.

05

Invest adequately in the

understanding of the existing
codebase.

cloud native than just adhering to the original 12

to declare dependencies and let the tool ensure those

dependencies are satisfied and packaged into a single
binary deployment artifact. Plugins like Maven Shade or
Spring Boot enable you to bundle your application and its
dependencies into a single uberjar or fat jar and thus

factors. As with most things, Java is up to the task.

provide the means to isolate those dependencies.

applications are synonymous. A goal of this

article is to illustrate that theres a lot more to

In this article well examine concepts and code

samples, taking a look beyond the standard 12
factors in the process, as Kevin Hoffmann does in
his recent OReilly book Beyond the 12 Factor App.

Figure 1 is a portion of an example Spring Boot application

Maven build file, pom.xml. This shows the dependency
declarations as specified by the developer.
FIGURE 1: A PORTION OF POM.XML SHOWING APPLICATION DEPENDENCIES

<parent>

1. ONE CODEBASE
While less of a Java-specific concept, this factor generally
refers to getting to a single code base managed in source
control or a set of repositories from a common root.
Getting to a single codebase makes it cleaner to build and
push any number of immutable releases across various
environments. The best example of violating this is when
your app is composed of a dozen or more code repositories.
While using one code repository to produce multiple
applications can be workable, the goal is a 1:1 relationship
between apps and repos. Operating from one codebase can
be done but is not without its own challenges. Sometimes
one application per repository is the simplest thing that
works for a team or organization.

<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.3.7.RELEASE</version>
<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository
-->
</parent>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-config</
artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-eureka</
artifactId>
</dependency>

2. DEPENDENCY MANAGEMENT

<dependency>

Most Java (and Groovy) developers can take advantage

of facilities like Maven (and Gradle), which provide the
means to declare the dependencies your app requires for
proper build and execution. The idea is to allow developers

28

<groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-zipkin</
artifactId>
</dependency>

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

DZONE.COM/GUIDES

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Figure 2 is a portion of listed dependencies within the same

dependencies like the JDK, OS, and Tomcat. The goal is

application, showing JARs bundled into the applications

to produce a release that can be executed, versioned, and

uberjar, which isolates those dependencies from variations

rolled back. The cloud platform takes the release and

in the underlying environment. The application will rely

handles the Run phase in a strictly separated manner.

upon these dependencies rather than potentially conflicting

libraries present in the deployment target.

4. CONFIGURATION
This factor is about externalizing the type of configuration

FIGURE 2: A PORTION OF MVN DEPENDENCY:TREE FOR A SAMPLE APPLICATION

[INFO] Scanning for projects...

[INFO]
[INFO] ----------------------------------------------------------------------[INFO] Building quote-service 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ----------------------------------------------------------------------[INFO]
[INFO] --- maven-dependency-plugin:2.10:tree (default-cli) @
quote-service --[INFO] com.example:quote-service:jar:0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] +- org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starterconfig:jar:1.1.3.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | +- org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter:j
ar:1.1.1.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | | +- org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-contex
t:jar:1.1.1.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | | | \- org.springframework.security:springsecurity-crypto:jar:4.0.4.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | | +- org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-common
s:jar:1.1.1.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | | \- org.springframework.security:spring-securityrsa:jar:1.0.1.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | |
\- org.bouncycastle:bcpkixjdk15on:jar:1.47:compile
[INFO] | |
\- org.bouncycastle:bcprovjdk15on:jar:1.47:compile
[INFO] | +- org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-configclient:jar:1.1.2.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | | \- org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-autoconf
igure:jar:1.3.7.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | \- com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jacksondatabind:jar:2.6.7:compile
[INFO] |
\- com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jacksoncore:jar:2.6.7:compile
[INFO] +- org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-startereureka:jar:1.1.5.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | +- org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-netflixcore:jar:1.1.5.RELEASE:compile
[INFO] | | \- org.springframework.boot:springboot:jar:1.3.7.RELEASE:compile

staging, prod). Configuration can be everywhere: littered

among an apps code, in property sources like YAML, Java
properties, environment variables (env vars), CLI args,
system properties, JNDI, etc. There are various solutions
refactor your code to look for environment variables.
For simpler systems, a straightforward solution is to
leverage Javas System.getenv() to retrieve one or more
settings from the environment, or a Map of all keys and
values present. Figure 3 is an example of this type of code.
FIGURE 3: A PORTION OF POM.XML SHOWING APPLICATION DEPENDENCIE
private String userName = System.getenv(BACKINGSERVICE_UID);
private String password = System.getenv(BACKINGSERVICE_PASSWORD);

For more complex systems, Spring Cloud and Spring Boot

are popular choices and provide powerful capabilities for
source control and externalization of configuration data.

5. LOGS
Logs should be treated as event streams: a time-ordered
sequence of events emitted from an application. Since
you cant log to a file in a cloud, you log to stdout/stderr
and let the cloud provider or related tools handle it. For
example, Cloud Foundrys loggregator will turn logs into
streams so they can be aggregated and managed centrally.
stdout/stderr logging is simple in Java:
Logger log = Logger.getLogger(MyClass.class.getName());
log.setLevel(Level.ALL);
ConsoleHandler handler = new ConsoleHandler();
handler.setFormatter(new SimpleFormatter());
log.addHandler(handler);
handler.setLevel(Level.ALL);
log.fine(This is fine.);

3. BUILD, RELEASE, RUN

A single codebase is taken through a build process to
produce a single artifact; then merged with configuration
information external to the app. This is then delivered to
cloud environments and run. Never change code at runtime!

29

that varies between deployment environments (dev,

6. DISPOSABILITY
If you have processes that takes a while to start up or shut
down, they should be separated into a backing service and
optimized to accelerate performance. A cloud process is

The notion of Build leads naturally to continuous

integration (CI), since those systems provide a single
location that assemble artifacts in a repeatable way.
Modern Java frameworks can produce uberjars, or the
more traditional WAR file, as a single CI-friendly artifact.
The Release phase merges externalized configuration (see

disposable it can be destroyed and created at any time.

Configuration below) with your single app artifact and

on, like a database or messaging service. The app should

Designing for this helps to ensure good uptime and allows

you to get the benefit of features like auto scaling.

7. BACKING SERVICES
A backing service is something external your app depends

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

DZONE.COM/GUIDES

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

declare that it needs a backing service via an external

is important for leveraging features like auto-scale, blue-

config, like YAML or even a source-controlled config

green deployment, and more.

server. A cloud platform handles binding your app to

the service, ideally attaching and reattaching without
restarting your app. This loose coupling has many
advantages, like allowing you to use the circuit breaker
pattern to gracefully handle an outage scenario.

13. BEYOND 12 FACTOR: TELEMETRY, SECURITY,

API-FIRST DESIGN
The 12 Factors were authored circa 2012. Lets look at
just a few of the many baseline capabilities from modern
clouds that make your app more sustainable to run:

8. ENVIRONMENTAL PARITY
Shared development and QA sandboxes have different

Health alerts, cloud system metrics, logs

scale and reliability profiles from production, but you

Domain-specific telemetry

cant make snowflake environments! Cloud platforms

Application performance monitoring (APM)

keep multiple app environments consistent and eliminate

the pain of debugging environment discrepancies.

On Cloud Foundry, Java app logs can simply be directed

to stdout / stderr, where they are streamed and

9. ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESSES

aggregated for operators. Spring Boot makes JMX a snap,

These are things like timer jobs, one-off scripts, and

and commercial cloud platforms can provide advanced

other things you might have done using a programming

capabilities like APM.

shell. Backing Services and other capabilities from cloud

platforms can help run these, and while Java doesnt
(currently) ship with a shell like Python or Ruby, the
ecosystem has lots of options to make it easy to run one
off tasks or make a shell interface.

Security external to your application, applied to

application endpoints (URLs) with RBAC, is important on
cloud platforms for SSO & OAUTH2 provider integration.
Otherwise, security for multiple Java apps becomes
unmanageable.
Beyond the 12 Factor App describes the API-first

10. PORT BINDING

In the non-cloud world, its typical to see several apps
running in the same container, separating each app by
port number and then using DNS to provide a friendly
name to access. In the cloud you avoid this micromanagementthe cloud provider will manage port
assignment along with routing, scaling, etc.

approach as an extension of the contract-first

development pattern, where developers concentrate on
building the edges or seams of their application first.
With the integration points tested continuously via CI
servers, teams can work on their own services and still
maintain reasonable assurance that everything will work
together properly.

While it is possible to rely upon external mechanisms

to provide traffic to your app, these mechanisms vary
among containers, machines, and platforms. Port binding

REPLATFORMING
In conclusion, its important to realize that you dont need

provides you full control over how your application

all 15 factors just to replatform an existing app to run on

receives and responds to requests made of it, regardless

the cloud. This cloud native maturity model (expressed

of where it is deployed.

by a large financial services organization) illustrates

the type of progression used to approach large, complex

11. PROCESS

monolithic apps and 12 factorize them incrementally.

The original 12-factor definition here says that apps must

be stateless. But some state needs to be somewhere, of
course. Along these lines, this factor advocates moving
any long-running state into an external, logical backing
service implemented by a cache or data store.

12.CONCURRENCY
Cloud platforms are built to scale horizontally. There
are design considerations hereyour app should be
disposable, stateless, and use share-nothing processes.
Working with the platforms process management model

30

PIETER HUMPHREY is a Consulting Product Marketing

Manager responsible for Java Developer Marketing at Pivotal
Software, Inc. Pieter comes from BEA/Oracle with long history of
developer tools, Java EE, SOA, EAI, application server and other Java
middleware as both a marketing guy and sales engineer since 1998.
You can find him on twitter discussing Java, Spring and the Cloud.
MARK HECKLER is a Pivotal Principal Technologist &
Developer Advocate, conference speaker, published author, & Java
Champion focusing upon developing innovative production-ready
software at velocity for the Cloud and IoT applications. Mark is an
open source contributor and author/curator of a developer-focused
blog and an occasionally interesting Twitter account.

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

DZONE.COM/GUIDES

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Diving Deeper
INTO JAVA

TOP #JAVA TWITTER FEEDS

TO FOLLOW RIGHT AWAY

@reza_rahman

@starbuxman

@trisha_gee

@lukaseder

@arungupta

@myfear

@mariofusco

@dblevins

@omniprof

@javinpaul

JAVA ZONES

LEARN MORE & ENGAGE YOUR PEERS IN OUR JAVA-RELATED TOPIC PORTALS

Java

Web Dev

DevOps

dzone.com/java

dzone.com/webdev

dzone.com/devops

The largest, most active Java developer

community on the web. With news and
tutorials on Java tools, performance tricks,
and new standards and strategies that keep
your skills razor-sharp.

Web professionals make up one of the largest sections

of IT audiences; we are collecting content that helps web
professionals navigate in a world of quickly changing
language protocols, trending frameworks, and new
standards for user experience. The Web Dev Zone is
devoted to all things web developmentand that includes
everything from front-end user experience to back-end
optimization, JavaScript frameworks, and web design.
Popular web technology news and releases will
be covered alongside mainstay web languages.

DevOps is a cultural movement, supported by

exciting new tools, that is aimed at encouraging
close cooperation within cross-disciplinary teams
of developers and IT operations/system admins.
The DevOps Zone is your hot spot for news and
resources about Continuous Delivery, Puppet, Chef,
Jenkins, and much more.

TOP JAVA REFCARDZ

TOP JAVA WEBSITES

TOP JAVA BOOKS

Learn Microservices in Java

JavaEE-Guardians.io

Java 8 Lambdas:

dzone.com/refcardz/learn-microservices-in-java
A practical guide complete with examples for
designing Java microservices to support building
systems that are tolerant of failure.

An independent group of people concerned about

Oracles current lack of commitment to Java EE
who are doing all they can to preserve the interests
of the Java EE community.

Functional Programming for the Masses

ProgramCreek.com

Java Concurrency in Practice

A site dedicated to posting high quality

community-submitted Java tutorials and articles.

"This book is a must-read for anyone who uses

threads and cares about performance."

Java-Source.net

Java SE 8 for the Really

Impatient

Java Containerization
dzone.com/refcardz/java-containerization
Includes suggested configurations and extensive
code snippets to get your Java application up and
running inside a Docker-deployed Linux container.

Core Java
dzone.com/refcardz/core-java

Gives you an overview of key aspects of the Java

language and references on the core library,

A well-organized directory of open source software

focused on Java

commonly used tools, and new Java 8 features.

31

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

If youre a developer with core Java SE skills, this

hands-on book takes you through the language
changes in Java 8 triggered by the addition of
lambda expressions.

This short book gives an introduction to the many

new features of Java 8 (and a few features of
Java 7 that havent received much attention) for
programmers who are already familiar with Java.

DZONE.COM/GUIDES

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Cloud Native Java

At Your Service
Install, Deploy, Secure & Manage Spring
Clouds Service Discovery, Circuit Breaker
Dashboard, and Config Server capabilities
automatically as Pivotal Cloud Foundry
managed services today.
Engineered for apps built
with Spring Boot
A distributed platform engineered
for distributed Spring Cloud Apps
Cloud Native stream and batch
processing with Spring Cloud Data Flow

32

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

SPONSORED OPINION

Microservices and
Cloud Native Java
Spring Cloud provides tools for Spring Boot developers
to quickly apply some of the common patterns found in
distributed systems (e.g. configuration management, service
discovery, circuit breakers, intelligent routing, micro-proxy,
control bus, and much much more).When moving into
production, Cloud Native applications can leverage a unique
technology for automation of foundational microservice
infrastructure. Spring Cloud Services for Pivotal Cloud
Foundry packages the certain server-side components of
Spring Cloud, making them available as native managed
services inside Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF).For DevOps
teams, this creates powerful autoscaling & automation
possibilities for your services via:
PCF-managed NetflixOSS Eureka

Spring Cloud provides tools for

Spring developers to quickly apply
some of the common patterns
found in distributed systems
When authoring client-side application code to use
these services, developers can use native extensions to
Spring Boot to wield microservice technology like Eureka,
Hystrix, Zuul, Atlas, Consul, Zookeeper, Zikpin, as well as
abstractions for common AWS services like RDS, SQS, SNS,
Elasticache, S3, and Cloud Formation namespaces. The most
recent major addition is Spring Cloud Data Flow, a cloud
native programming and operating model for (streaming or
batch) data microservices on structured platforms. Taking
advantage of these battle-tested microservice patterns,
and of the libraries that implement them, can now be as
simple as including a starter POM in your applications
dependencies and applying the appropriate annotation.

PCF-managed NetflixOSS Hystrix Dashboard

PCF-managed Git based Config Server from Pivotal

WRITTEN BY PIETER HUMPHREY

PRINCIPAL MARKETING MANAGER, PIVOTAL

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Spring Cloud Services By Pivotal

Spring Cloud Services for Pivotal Cloud Foundry packages server-side components of certain
Spring Cloud projects and makes them available as managed services in Pivotal Cloud Foundry.
CATEGORY

NEW RELEASES

OPEN SOURCE

STRENGTHS

Java Solution for

Distributed Computing

As Needed

No

Automated production operation on Cloud Foundry

Microservice Security: OAUTH2, HTTPS, PCF UAA
integration, RBAC across apps

CASE STUDY
Spring Cloud Netflix provides NetflixOSS integrations for Spring

Scriptable, automated install & configuration

Boot apps through autoconfiguration and binding to the Spring

Zero Downtime updates and upgrades

Environment and other Spring programming model idioms. With

Service-level HA for Config Server & Service

Registry (in addition to Pivotal Cloud Foundry HA)

a few simple annotations you can quickly enable and configure

the common patterns inside your application and build large
distributed systems with battle-tested Netflix components. The

Automatic provisioning and configuration of MySQL

and RabbitMQ dependencies

patterns provided include Service Discovery (Eureka), Circuit

Breaker (Hystrix), Intelligent Routing (Zuul), and Client Side

PROMINENT TEAM MEMBERS

Load Balancing (Ribbon). Eureka instances can be registered and

Chris Sterling

Craig Walls

Chris Frost

clients can discover the instances using Spring-managed beans,

Ben Klein

Roy Clarkson

Glyn Normington

and an embedded Eureka server can be created with declarative

Scott Frederick

Will Tran

Java configuration.

Chris Schaefer

Mike Heath

BLOG spring.io/blog

33

TWITTER @SpringCloudOSS
DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

WEBSITE cloud.spring.io

Java's impact on the world is very far-reaching. It may not be new to the programming language game, but it is still very
much present in the modern world. According to GitHub stats, Java has been the most popular programming language
since 2005. Since it has been the predominant language for so long, almost every major industry has a major investment
in Java. Here, we've illustrated where Java is all around us, how many Java developer jobs are listed in that industry
based on a LinkedIn Jobs search, and what it's used for in a wide array of industries.
SPACE
NASA uses Java to simulate physics in space.

MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES

Java is cross-platform, and it is easy to integrate

NASA's existing legacy systems into new projects.

Android devices are all driven by Java libraries.

739 space-related jobs for Java developers

Java is the official language for developing Android apps.

1,627 jobs for Java/Android developers.

HOSPITALS

CITY INFRASTRUCTURE

All the management of hospital

functions and reporting run on Java.

Java is used by Hitachi to monitor and control water and

sewage systems in cities across desktop and mobile devices.

Java is used in military mobile apps

transitioning away from Ada for more
secure applications.

It is the basis of multi-institutional

medical information retrieval
systems.

Java is used to track energy usage in embedded devices,

from single appliances to a city grid, to make developers
aware of how much power they're using.

Any military-controlled devices, such

as drones and anti-aircraft defense
systems, are using Java.

972 hospital jobs for Java developers.

317 Java city infrastructure jobs.

MILITARY

402 military jobs for Java developers.

GAMING
Java has moved beyond what XCode can do in creating virtual and
augmented reality games.

BANKS
Use Tomcat - an open source version of Java web service
technologies for their APIs and web apps.

CONSUMER
ELECTRONICS & IoT
100% of Blu-Ray players ship with Java.

Minecraft was written in Java, which has over 24 million in sales and
was acquired by Microsoft for 2.5 billion dollars.

Java Smart Cards (the same chips on your credit card)

are used to deploy Java apps to rugged devices.

641 Java game developer jobs.

3,499 embedded device Java developer jobs and

980 IoT jobs.

AUTOMOTIVE

Java is a good alternative to COBOL as it is a modern language

and can be documented more easily.

Responsible for operating the accelerometer, thermal sensors for tires and breaks, in-car heart rate monitors, and touchscreen controls.

12,160 jobs for Java developers in financial services.

173 jobs for automotive Java developers.

Java and JavaFX are responsible for collecting and visualizing data such as GPS, engine load, fuel pressure, air intake temp.

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QUICK VIEW

FROM DESKTOP TO WEB JAVA:

A Planners Guide
to Migration
BY BEN WILSON
SENIOR CONSULTANT AT VAADIN

Companies with desktop applications written

in Java are under increased pressure to provide
their users the freedom of a responsive web
experience. Ideally you could just run a desktopstyle application inside a browser, and for a long
time applets have made it possible to do just that.
However, applets work using a protocol called
NPAPI, which has been deprecated in most recent
browsers. Today, the only real option to run a web
application is to get pure HTML5 into the browser
not easy for most desktop developers given
the new set of styling, scripting, and markup
languages they have to learn.
There are many benefits of moving applications to the web, but
some of the most challenging software projects have always
been application migrations. What do successful migration
projects look like? How do you eliminate a desktop system
that has reliably run a part of the business for years, stay in
budget with a migration, and delight users with a new browser
application all at once?

AVOID THESE COMMON PITFALLS

#1: OVERESTIMATING TECHNICAL SKILLS
Overestimating technical skills can lead to both delays in producing
code and increased defects, since developers do a poorer job of
predicting side-effects and remembering new conventions.
Skills are one of the trickiest things to estimate correctly. The
DevOps teams maintaining the current applications will be

36

01

Be conservative when estimating

developer skills and user
knowledge

02

Establish a common
understanding between IT and
users on the modernization drivers
and their priorities.

03

Keep business engaged and

preserve momentum with
incremental improvements.

04

Look for opportunities to reuse

the tested, working code in
production.

05

Invest adequately in
understanding the existing
codebase

proficient in the current set of technologies, but often forget the

years of effort that went into acquiring this proficiency. Coding
conventions, naming conventions, namespace organization,
software architecture, and testing approaches are just some
of the choices that require more than casual experience to
establish. However, most will be needed from the very start of
any serious developments of the new software.
The problem is illustrated in the four stages of competence
model: unless the migration can happen in a way that leverages
developer skills, transition for most will be from unconscious
competence in the old to unconscious incompetence in the new.
This black hole of unconsciousness is a terrible starting point
for rational planning and realistic effort estimation of a complex
technical exercise.
#2: OVERRELIANCE ON USERS FOR REQUIREMENTS
Relying on users for specifications can result in surprises, especially
towards the end of the project when acceptance starts, since many
features are invisible to them.
Users typically have many years of experience using the
application but may not have comprehensive specifications on
all features that exist, those that exist and work, those that
work and are still used, and those that are used and used only
in specific conditions.
Application migration initiatives often start with lacking or
outdated documentation artifacts. For large applications it is
also likely that there is no one single person in the organization
who knows every feature of the application, but that many
people have a small piece of the puzzle. In these cases,
requirements can only be elicited through meetings and the
occasional groupthink.

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#3: RUNNING OUT OF STEAM

Frequent feedback and reinforcement from both users and developers
breathe life into long-running projects.
Modernization efforts are prone to being cancelled midway.
While the first version of the current information system might
have gone into production in one go, business applications
undergo all manner of corrective and adaptive maintenance
as user needs evolve. Repeated in many theories of software
evolution, enterprise applications change but importantly
also grow over time. Compounded over multiple years,
legacy applications can grow to include a large number of
features that can make managing testing and acceptance
activities a project in itself.
As long as the new system does not fulfill all of the feature
requirements, users will see they have little choice but to
continue using the system in production. Prolonged periods of
not being able to deliver value to business are lethal to software
projects, and many modernizations die this way.

TIPS ON MAKING THE MIGRATION A SUCCESS

#1: DO APM FIRST
APM helps organizations focus their modernization efforts where
they are needed most.
Application Portfolio Management (APM) is a tool to help
organizations identify which applications they are running
and where the source code is, so it is a useful starting point
for planning a migration anyway. But APM also goes further to
help us analyze the value of the applications in our portfolios
and allows us to plan modernization efforts strategically.
With it we recognize that even if we select a framework as a
strategic technical platform for the future, not all applications
in our organization need to be rewritten to use this framework
with equal urgency, if at all.
APM comes in various flavors, and one of the most widely
known is Gartners TIME APM framework. APM frameworks
typically categorize applications according to technical and
business criteria, where an application can score either high
or low on either. Applications that score high on business
criteria (for instance, the application is an enabler of a key
differentiator for the company) and low on technical criteria
(for instance, high risk or cost of ownership) benefit the most
from migration and should be prioritized.
#2: FIND A WAY TO REUSE AT LEAST SOME PARTS OF THE
EXISTING DESKTOP JAVA
In migration, the shortest and most agile path is reuse.
An easy way to convince a business that a new application is
ready to be accepted is if the old and new applications, with
identical data, can execute identical business processes to yield
identical results. This is much easier when data structures and
services of the production and modernized systems correspond
or can at least be matched using a simple conversion.
Another reason why artifact reuse is worthwhile is that
migration projects of large applications can easily take over

37

a year to complete. In that time users will still expect new

features to be implemented in the existing systems, and
other updates may be required for regulatory compliance or
to fix critical defects. In this dynamic setup, we want to make
sure that things we change in the production system can be
demonstrated to also work as intended in the new system.
The more that production business logic, services, interfaces,
and data structures can be leveraged in the new modernized
version, the easier this synchronization becomes.
#3: FIND AN INCREMENTAL APPROACH THAT WORKS FOR
YOUR ORGANIZATION
Lower risk and the perception of risk by limiting scope.
Its likely that the business has a long list of wishes, and that
developers have a far-reaching plan to deploy a future-proof IT
architecture. When considering larger business applications, it is
unlikely that an attempt to migrate big-bang style all code, while
fulfilling all business wishes and all IT wishes, will succeed.
Migration projects dont happen for their own sake. For IT and
the business to agree on an incremental modernization approach
that will succeed, it is useful to understand which factors are
actually relevant for driving the modernization and where the
emphasis lies. Commonly there will be a combination of internal
drivers (newer, better supported technology) and external ones
(business agility and user freedom).
Following this exercise, there are different incremental
approaches that could be considered:

Modernize first the back-end, then the front-end;

Fully modernize and replace one module or view at a time;
Perform first a technical migration and then a
modernization;
Embed mini browser components inside the desktop
application to make a gradual shift to web technology
possible;
Create an abstraction layer for the UI framework. This is
often more expensive than doing a complete UI layer rewrite, but allows running and developing the legacy version
during the migration phase.

CONCLUSION
Migration projects are daunting, especially when applications
are large. Companies used to typical software maintenance
scenarios are not used to scoping and executing these kinds of
projects and many fail. APM, the appropriate reuse of existing
code, and incremental approaches, improve the chances of
success significantly. Getting help from software companies with
experience in migrations is always a good idea if migrations are
unprecedented for the organizations taking the step.
BE N W I L S ON is a senior software professional with over
ten years specialized experience automating the modernization
of large mission-critical enterprise applications, with a focus
on UI modernization. Ben has worked on numerous projects in
the banking, telecoms, government, automotive, and aerospace
sectors, and currently works at Vaadin as a senior consultant.

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38

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DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

SPONSORED OPINION

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

One Microservice
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WRITTEN BY MARKUS EISELE

DEVELOPER ADVOCATE, LIGHTBEND, INC.

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

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39

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HASH TABLES, MUTABILITY, AND IDENTITY:

How to Implement
a Bi-Directional
Hash Table in Java

QUICK VIEW
01

Mutability can affect the

behavior of hash tables.

02

Misunderstanding
mutability can cause
objects stored in a
hash table to become
irretrievable and
essentially disappear.

03

It is possible to implement
hash tables where any
object no matter how
complex or mutable can
be used as a key.

BY WAYNE CITRIN
CTO AT JNBRIDGE

Data structures like hash tables and hash

maps are essential for storing arbitrary objects
and efficiently retrieving them. The object,
or value, is stored in the table and associated
with a key. Using the key, one can later retrieve
the associated object. However, there are
situations where, in addition to mapping keys
to objects, one might also want to retrieve the
key associated with a given object. This problem
has been encountered time and again, and the
solution is much trickier.

In Java, for example, the contract of the hashCode() method is:

For example, we must efficiently keep track of the underlying

remote objects corresponding to proxies when developing our
JNBridge product. We do that by maintaining a table mapping
unique keys to objects. This is straightforward to implement, using
hash tables and maps available in many libraries. We also must be
able to obtain an objects unique key given the object provided
it has one. (Yes, some libraries now offer bimaps, which purport to
implement this functionality, but these didnt exist when we first
needed this, so we had to implement it on our own. In addition,
these bimaps dont provide everything we need. Well discuss
these issues later.)

In addition to these contracts, Java provides guidelines for the use

and implementation of hash codes, although these are not binding
and may just be advisory. While guidelines for some non-Java
frameworks suggest that hash codes for mutable objects should only
be based on aspects of the objects that are immutable so that
the hash codes never change in Java culture, the guidelines for
implementing hashCode() are less strict, and it is quite likely that an
objects hash code can change. For example, the hash code of a hash
table object can change as items are added and removed. However,
one informal guideline suggests that one should be careful using
an object as a key in a hash-based collection when its hash code
can change. As youll see, the potential mutability of hash codes is a
crucial consideration when implementing reverse maps.

Following are some helpful hints in implementing these forward/

reverse map pairs.

HASHING ALGORITHM REQUIREMENTS

Lets first review the requirements that must be fulfilled by
whatever hashing algorithm is used, and how it relates to
equality. While a hashing method can be implemented by the
developer, it is expected to obey a contract. The contract in
general cannot be verified by the underlying platform, but if it is
not obeyed, data structures that rely on the hashing method may
not behave properly.

40

For any given object, the hashCode() method must return the

same value throughout execution of the application (assuming

that information used by the objects equality test also
remains unchanged).
If two objects are equal according to the objects equality test,

then they must both have the same hash code.

Connected with the hashCode() method is an equality test, which
should implement an equivalence relation; that is, it must be
reflexive, symmetric, and transitive. It should also be consistent:
It should yield the same result throughout execution of the
application (again, assuming the information used by the equality
test doesnt change).

If an objects hash code changes while its stored inside a data

structure that depends on the hash code (for example, if its used as a
key in a hash table), then the object may never be retrieved, as it will
be placed in one hash bucket as its added to the hash table, but looked
for later in another hash bucket when the hash code has changed.

IMPLEMENTATION ASSUMPTIONS
So, what does this mean when forward/reverse map pairs must be
implemented? Lets start with some assumptions:

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The forward map maps from keys to values. The keys are a

particular type that one chooses in advance, and values

can be any object. The value objects can be implemented
by anyone, and their hash codes and equality tests may not
conform to implementation guidelines they may not even
obey the required contract.

In Java, our identity-based wrappers look like this:

final class IdentityWrapper
{
private Object theObject;
public IdentityWrapper(Object wrappedObject)
{
theObject = wrappedObject;
}

The reverse map maps from the user-provided values back

to keys.

public boolean equals(Object obj2)

{
if (obj2 == null) return false;
if (!(obj2 instanceof IdentityWrapper)) return false;
return (theObject == ((IdentityWrapper)obj2).theObject);
}

For simplicity, the user-defined object cannot be null.

(Although, if necessary, this can be accommodated, too,

through some additional tests.)
Keys and user-defined objects should be unique; that is, they

should not be used in the tables more than once.

Since the key is under our control, a developer can use objects of
any immutable class (for example, Integer or Long), and avoid the
possibility that the keys hash code changes. For the forward map,
a simple hash table or hash map can be used.
The reverse map is more of a problem. As discussed above,
one cannot rely on the hash code method associated with the
user-provided objects that are used as keys. While some classes,
particularly Java base classes, may have well-behaved hash
code functions, other Java classes might not. Therefore, its
unsafe to trust that user-defined classes will obey these rules,
or that the programmers that defined them were even aware of
these guidelines.

FIND AN IMMUTABLE ATTRIBUTE

Therefore, one must come up with an attribute that every object
has, that is guaranteed to never change, even when the contents
of the object do change. The attributes value should also be welldistributed, and therefore suitable for use in hashing. One such
immutable attribute is the objects identity. When a hash table, for
example, has items added to it, its still the same hash table, even
though the computed hash code might change. Fortunately, Java
provides a hashing method based on object identity:
java.lang.System.identityHashCode(), which is guaranteed
to return the same value on a given object, even if its state
has changed, since it is guaranteed to use java.lang.Objects
hashCode() method, which is identity-based, even if the target
class overrides that method.
Java actually provides a class java.util.IdentityHashMap,
which uses identity hashing. The developer could have used
IdentityHashMap for his reverse hash table, except that, unlike
the Java Hashtable, IdentityHashMap is not synchronized, and
hash tables must be thread-safe.

Once these wrappers have been defined, the developer has

everything he needs for a reverse hash table that works correctly:
Hashtable ht = new Hashtable();

ht.put(new IdentityWrapper(mutableUserDefinedObject), value);

mutableUserDefinedObject.modify();

Value v = (Value) ht.get(new

IdentityWrapper(mutableUserDefinedObject));
// retrieved v is the same as the value that was initially added.

If the IdentityWrapper classes are not used, the ht.get()

operation is not guaranteed to retrieve the proper value.
At this point, the developer has all thats needed to implement bidirectional hash tables.

THE TROUBLE WITH OTHER LIBRARIES

What about other existing libraries? In particular, what about
Googles Guava library, which implements a HashBiMap class, as
well as other classes implementing a BiMap interface? Why not
use that, and avoid reinventing the wheel? Unfortunately, while
HashBiMap implements a forward/reverse hashmap pair and
makes sure that the two are always in sync, it does not use identity
hashing, and will not work properly if one of the keys or values is
a mutable object. This can be seen by examining the HashBiMap
source code. So, while HashBiMap solves part of the problem of
implementing forward/reverse hashmap pairs, it does not address
another, arguably more difficult part: the problem of storing
mutable objects. The approach described here solves that issue.

IN CONCLUSION

CREATING IDENTITY-BASED HASHING

In order to write ones own identity-based hash tables, the
developer must first ensure that, no matter what object is used as
the key, identity-based hashing is always used. Unfortunately, the
hash methods for these classes cant be overridden, since theyre
out of the developers control. Instead, the key objects must be
wrapped in classes that are in the developers control, and where
he can control the way the hash values are computed. In these
wrappers, the hash method simply returns the identity-based
hash code of the wrapped object. In addition, since identitybased hashing is being used, one must also use reference-based
equality, so that two objects are equal if and only if theyre
the same object, rather than simply equivalent objects. In Java, a
developer must use the "==" operator, which is guaranteed to be
reference equality, rather than equals(), which can be, and often
is, redefined by the developer.

41

public int hashCode()

{
return System.identityHashCode(theObject);
}

This piece discusses an important, but unfortunately somewhat

obscure, issue in the implementation of hash tables: the way in
which mutability can affect the behavior of hash tables, and the
way in which misunderstanding the issue can cause objects stored
in a hash table to become irretrievable and essentially disappear.
When these issues are understood, it becomes possible to
implement hash tables where any object, no matter how complex
or mutable, can be used as a key, and where bi-directional hash
tables can be easily created.

WAY N E C I T R I N is the CTO of JNBridge, the leading provider

of interoperability tools that connect Java and .NET that he
cofounded 15 years ago. Previously, Wayne was a leading researcher
in programming languages and compilers and was on the Computer
Engineering faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has a
PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in Computer Science.

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QUICK VIEW

Executive Insights
on the State of the
Java Ecosystem
BY TOM SMITH

01

Java continues to be an
important element of
enterprise IT given the
breadth, depth, longevity, and
diversity of the ecosystem.

02

The Open Source community

is driving more innovation
and development of the Java
ecosystem than Oracle.

03

Java will continue to be

prominent in enterprise
development in the near
term; however, it will likely
be replaced by more specific
languages in the long term.

RESEARCH ANALYST AT DZONE

To gather insights on the state of the Java ecosystem today,

vast amount of free online content (answered questions,

we spoke with 14 executives who are familiar with the Java

tutorials, etc.) and free libraries. It is rare to encounter a

ecosystem. Heres who we talked to:

development task in Java where you cannot find at least a

partial solution, or hints at a solution, within a few minutes

JOEL DEPERNET, E.V.P. Global Research and Development, Axway

of searching.

SACHA LABOUREY, CEO and Founder, CloudBees

02 The single biggest event in the past year was Oracles

RICK REICH, CEO, Development Heroes

ASAD ALI, Principal Software Developer, Dynatrace

lawsuit against Google. The entire industry was waiting to

see whether the Java platform, and software development

LISA HAMAKER, Marketing Manager, Dynatrace

in general, was going to change radically to accommodate

DAVID PARK, V.P. of Products, HackerRank

the fact that licenses would be required just to create a

CHARLES KENDRICK, Founder and CTO, Isomorphic Software

compatible implementation of an API. The Java platform

WAYNE CITRIN, CTO, JNBridge

RAYMOND AUG, Senior Software Architect, Liferay

will be forever diminished by Oracles stewardship, since

they have shown themselves to be fundamentally hostile
to Open Source by filing the lawsuit in the first place, while

LAURA KASSOVIC, Founder, MbientLab

vendors like Red Hat and the Open Source community have

CAMERON WILBY, Co-Founder, Origin Code Academy

been pushing Java more than Oracle.

JAMES FAULKNER, Technology Evangelist, Red Hat

03 The impact of Java 8 so far is that Lambda expressions

PAUL TROWE, CEO, Replay Games

make it easier for developers to build applications. Its

CALVIN FRENCH-OWEN, CTO and Co-Founder, Segment

easier to write cleaner code. Its more maintainable with

less repetition. Oracle has finally updated the language

42

KEY FINDINGS

features to match those of other modern languages. The

01 The most important components of the Java ecosystem

uptake of Java 8 depends on enterprises desire and need

are the JVM, its versatility, its breadth and depth as a

to do so. Adoption can take years, which can be very

result of its age, and the Open Source movement driving

frustrating. While theres been a lot of attention on security

the availability of free online content for all developers.

fixes, enterprises are slow to adopt due to lack of support.

The JVM platform runs on all machines and the cloud. The

Theres not a lot of buy-in to get to 8, even though it has

single most important part of the Java ecosystem is the

better security and garbage collection.

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04 Theres little to no anticipation for Java 9 at this point,

going anywhere for the next five to 10 years since its the

considering the slow adoption of Java 8. Vendors wont

preferred language of enterprises because it scales, as

use Java 9 until they see some uptake by their enterprise

well as saving them time and money. It will remain the

clients. While Java 9 offers modularity, some people

predominant language in coding for quite a while since a

expressed fear and confusion over how the modularity

lot of enterprises have a lot of equity invested in Java. There

is being handled. Is there misrepresentation of what will

will be a slow loss of relevance over time until ultimately

be possible? Its not playing out as Oracle would like due

its seen as a specialized skill needed only by a few, similar

to lack of uptake. A lot of software is already offering

to the way mainframe languages are currently seen. There

modularity. Doing this in a closed environment makes it

will be fewer developers using Java in the areas where Java

difficult to close the gap.

has core strengths and Java will ultimately be phased out

in favor of more appropriate languages and tools.

05 Perspectives on the Java Community Process (JCP), and

its future, are depressed. JCP changes have been difficult

09 When we asked executives what developers need to

given the situation with Oracle and their desire to milk Java

keep in mind when working with Java, we received a variety

like an annuity without letting others have too much freedom

of opinions. One set revolved around the philosophy that

with the product. Theres a perception that Java 8 and 9 will

companies are generally looking for the best programmers

lead to a more closed ecosystem. This perception is driven

and engineers with less concern for a particular language.

by the fear of vendor lock-in by whats currently going on

As such, developers should focus on developing their coding

with cloud platforms. Some people see the JCP stagnating

skills and knowing the fundamentals of computer science,

and becoming non-existent. The future of the JCP lies with

as well as its real-world applications. Another group feels

stewards like the Apache Software Foundation, the Eclipse

Foundation, and the OSGi Alliance. The Java community is
strong and will keep the language viable for a while; however,
Oracle needs to open it up and let others contribute if Java is
going to have a robust future.

have, and developers should get to know the common Java

libraries and tools. Learn to appreciate the tools that are
available and leverage them to the max. Always be learning
while having a primary skill to ensure you have stable
employment. Look for a secondary skill that will provide you

06 The greatest value seen in Java is its diversity: its

scalable, its portable, it works on many machines, and it

works on many different operating systems. Its not a one
trick pony and cant be compared to other languages. It
makes the lives of companies much better. Java is one of the
top three languages in the world for quality, reliability, ability
to deliver on demand, toolchains, and developer ecosystem.
Its the only language that can make this claim. Its still the
most powerful and comprehensive language. Lastly, unlike

with developer insurance.

10 When asked about additional considerations with

regard to the Java ecosystem, executives raised several

questions and made some important observations:
What could Java be doing better?
There will be more opportunities with mobile. Will Java

keep up the pace?

As more and more infrastructure moves to the cloud, or

other languages, there are plenty of developers.

07 The most common issue affecting the Java ecosystem

is Oracle. If Oracle would go to an Open Source model, Java

would grow faster if everyone took the code and improved it,
rather than waiting for Oracle. Oracle is a dubious steward and
Java is inappropriate for a number of tasks that its being used
for, and it will ultimately be replaced for specific needs. Theres
a lack of visibility of the leadership of Java within Oracle.
Oracle owns Java but isnt stepping up to push Java forward.
Theres a lack of innovation within Oracle and therefore a slow
uptake of the newer versions of Java by enterprises.
08 The future of Java continues to be strong in the near

term but diminishing over the long term (10+ years). Even
with all of the new languages being developed, Javas not

43

that having full knowledge of Java is a good basic skill to

cloud-like provisioning, will these services run on Java

or JVMs at all?
Java is notorious for all the zero-day exploits and is only

second to Adobe Flash in the number of vulnerabilities

and security patches.
Is Oracle going to make Java programming more

flexible?
Why arent more companies making contributions to

the Java community?

TOM S M I T H is a Research Analyst at DZone who excels
at gathering insights from analyticsboth quantitative and
qualitativeto drive business results. His passion is sharing
information of value to help people succeed. In his spare time, you
can find him either eating at Chipotle or working out at the gym.

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Theres nothing about Java

that AppDynamics doesnt see.
AppDynamics gives you the visibility to take command
of your Java applications performance, no matter
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Internet
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AppDynamics Internal Diagnostics

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1 critical, 0 warning, 36 normal

Server Health
0 critical, 5 warning, 1 normal

Java

Transaction Scorecard

Java

Normal

Java

83.1%
0.3%

Very Slow

1.3%

15

Stall
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0.2%

15.1%

175

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Java

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44

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

963

Slow

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

SPONSORED OPINION

Whats Exciting About Java 9 and

Application Performance Monitoring
In todays modern computing age, constant

programming productivity, Java has also grown

enhancements in software innovations are

due to its high performance yet scalable JVM

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runtime, building among the fastest computing

Perhaps in the distant future, that may be how

modern applications. As Javas footprint expands,

the 21st century is remembered best. Among the

JDK innovations continue to impact billions

popular software languages out there, however,

of lines of code. As AppDynamics continues

Java continues to have the largest industry

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only furthered by our customer use & industry

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adoption of the JVM.

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priority. Despite having a massive API to improve

WRITTEN BY AAKRIT PRASAD

HEADING CORE & APM PRODUCTS, PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, APPDYNAMICS

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Application Intelligence Platform By AppDynamics

If your business runs on apps, Application Intelligence is for you. Real-time insights
into application performance, user experience, and business outcomes.

CATEGORY

NEW RELEASES

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technology solution that provides end-to-end
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CASE STUDY

"AppDynamics has enabled us to move towards datadriven troubleshooting rather than gut-feels. The
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NOTABLE CUSTOMERS
- Nitin Thakur, technical operations manager, Cisco

BLOG

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Hallmark

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DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

Solutions Directory
Java gets even greater when you have the right tools to back you up. This directory contains libraries,
frameworks, IDEs, and more to help you with everything from database connection to release automation,
from code review to application monitoring, from microservice architectures to memory management. Amp
up your Java development with these solutions to make your life easier and your application more powerful.

46

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

Akka

Lightbend

Java implementation of Actor Model

Open Source

akka.io

AngularFaces

AngularJS + JSF

Open Source

angularfaces.com

Ansible

Red Hat

Deployment automation + configuration management

Open Source

ansible.com

ANTLR

Parser generator (for creating compilers and related tools)

Open Source

antlr3.org

AnyPoint Platform

MuleSoft

Hybrid integration platform

Free Trial

mulesoft.com/platform/
enterprise-integration

Apache Ant

Apache Software
Foundation

Build automation (process-agnostic: specify targets + tasks)

Open Source

ant.apache.org

Apache Camel

Apache Software
Foundation

Java implementation of enteprrise integration patterns

Open Source

camel.apache.org

Apache Commons

Apache Software
Foundation

Massive Java package collection

Open Source

commons.apache.org/
components.html

Apache Commons
DBCP

Apache Software
Foundation

Database connection pooling

Open Source

commons.apache.org/proper/
commons-dbcp

Apache Commons
IO

Apache Software
Foundation

Utilities for Java I/O (part of Apache Commons)

Open Source

commons.apache.org/proper/
commons-io

Apache CXF

Apache Software
Foundation

Java services framework with JAX-WS and JAX-RS support

Open Source

cxf.apache.org

Apache DeltaSpike

Apache Software
Foundation

Portable CDI extensions (bean validation, JSF enhancements,

invocation controls, transactions contexts, more)

Open Source

deltaspike.apache.org

Apache Ignite

Apache Software
Foundation

In-memory Data Grid

Open Source

ignite.apache.org

Apache Ivy

Apache Software
Foundation

Dependency management with strong Ant integration)

Open Source

ant.apache.org/ivy

Apache Kafka

Apache Software
Foundation

Distributed pub-sub message broker

Open Source

kafka.apache.org

Apache Log4j

Apache Software
Foundation

Logging for Java

Open Source

logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x

Apache Lucene

Apache Software
Foundation

Search engine in Java

Open Source

lucene.apache.org/core

Apache Maven

Apache Software
Foundation

Build automation (opinionated, plugin-happy, higher-level build

phases, dependency management/resolution)

Open Source

maven.apache.org

Apache Mesos

Apache Software
Foundation

Distributed systems kernel

Open Source

mesos.apache.org

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

Apache MyFaces

Apache Software
Foundation

JSF + additional UI widgets, extensions, integrations

Open Source

myfaces.apache.org

Apache OpenNLP

Apache Software
Foundation

Natural language processing machine learning toolkit

Open Source

opennlp.apache.org

Apache POI

Apache Software
Foundation

Microsoft document processing for Java

Open Source

poi.apache.org

Apache Shiro

Apache Software
Foundation

Java security framework (authen/author, crypto, session

management)

Open Source

shiro.apache.org

Apache Struts

Apache Software
Foundation

Web framework (Servlet + MVC)

Open Source

struts.apache.org

Apache Tapestry

Apache Software
Foundation

Web framework (pages&components=POJOs, live class

reloading, opinionated, light HttpSessions)

Open Source

tapestry.apache.org

Apache Tomcat

Apache Software
Foundation

Servlet container + web server (JSP, EL, Websocket)

Open Source

tomcat.apache.org

Apache TomEE

Apache Software
Foundation (esp.
Tomitribe)

Apache Tomcat + Java EE features (CDI, EJB, JPA, JSF, JSP, more)

Open Source

tomee.apache.org

Apache Wicket

Apache Software
Foundation

Simple web app framework (pure Java + HTML with Ajax output)

Open Source

wicket.apache.org

Apache Xerces2

Apache Software
Foundation

XML parser for Java

Open Source

xerces.apache.org/xerces2-j

AppDynamics

AppDynamics *

APM with Java agent

Free Tier Available

appdynamics.com

Artifactory

JFrog

Binary/artifact repository manager

Open Source

jfrog.com/artifactory

ASM

OW2 Consortium

Java bytecode manipulation and analysis framework

Open Source

asm.ow2.org

AssertJ

Java assertion framework (for verification and debugging)

Open Source

joel-costigliola.github.io/assertj

AutoPilot

Nastel

APM

Freemium

nastel.com

AWS ECS

Amazon Web
Services

Elastic container service (with Docker support)

Free Tier Available

aws.amazon.com/ecs

BigMemory Max

Terracotta

In-memory data grid with Ehcache (JCache implementation)

90 Days

terracotta.org/products/
bigmemory

Bintray

JFrog

Package hosting and distribution infrastructure

Open Source

bintray.com

Black Duck Platform

Black Duck
Software

Security and open-source scanning and management (with

container support)

Free Security Scan

blackducksoftware.com

BlueMix

IBM

PaaS with extensive Java support

Free Tier Available

ibm.com/bluemix

BouncyCastle

Java and C# cryptography libraries

Open Source

bouncycastle.org

CA Application
Monitoring

CA Technologies *

APM with Java agent

30 Days

ca.com

Cask

Cask

Data and application integration platform

Open Source

cask.co/

Catchpoint

Catchpoint

APM with Java agent

Free Trial

catchpoint.com

Censum

jClarity

GC log analysis

7 Days

jclarity.com

CGLIB

Raphael
Winterhalter

Byte code generation library

Open Source

github.com/cglib/cglib

CheckStyle

Automated check against Java coding standards

Open Source

checkstyle.sourceforge.net

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

Chef

Chef Software

Infrastructure automation / configuration management

Open Source

chef.io/chef/

Cloudbees Jenkins
Platform

Cloudbees

CI server + verified plugins, build server provisioning, pipeline

monitoring, build analytics

2 Weeks

cloudbees.com

Clover

Atlassian

Code coverage analysis tool

30 days

atlassian.com/software/clover/
pricing

Codenvy IDE

Codenvy

SaaS IDE with dev workspace isolation

Free Tier Available

codenvy.com

Couchbase

Couchbase

Document-oriented DBMS

Open Source

couchbase.com

Coverity

Synopsys

Security and open-source scanning (static, runtime, fuzz)

C3P0

JDBC connection and statement pooling

Open Source

mchange.com/projects/c3p0

CUBA Platform

Haulmont

Java rapid enterprise app development framework

Free Tier Available

cuba-platform.com

Cucumber

Cucumber

BDD framework with Java version

cucumber.io

Dagger

Square

Dependency injector for Android and Java

Open Source

square.github.io/dagger

DataDirect

Progress Software

JDBC connectors (many data sources)

Free Trial

progress.com/jdbc

Derby

Apache Software
Foundation

Java SQL database engine

Open Source

db.apache.org/derby

Docker

Docker

Containerization platform

Open Source

docker.com

Dolphin Platform

Canoo

Presentation model framework (multiple views for same MVC group)

Open Source

dolphin-platform.io

DripStat

Chronon Systems

Java+Scala APM with many framework integrations

Free Tier Available

dripstat.com

Drools

Red Hat

Business rules management system

Open Source

drools.org

Dropwizard

REST web services framework (opinionated, rapid spinup)

Open Source

dropwizard.io

Dynatrace
Application
Monitoring

Dynatrace

APM

30 Days

dynatrace.com

Dynatrace SaaS and

Managed

Dynatrace
(formerly Ruxit)

APM

30 Days

dynatrace.com/platform/
offerings/ruxit

EasyMock

Unit testing framework (mocks Java objects)

Open Source

easymock.org

Eclipse

Eclipse Foundation

IDE (plugin-happy)

Open Source

eclipse.org

Eclipse Che

Eclipse Foundation

IDE (workspace isolation, cloud hosting)

Open Source

eclipse.org/che

Eclipse Collections

Eclipse Foundation

Java Collections framework

Open Source

eclipse.org/collections

EclipseLink

Eclipse Foundation

JPA+MOXx(JAXB) implementation

Open Source

eclipse.org/eclipselink

EHCache

Terracotta

JCache implementation

Open Source

ehcache.org

ElasticSearch

Elastic

Distributed search and analytics engine

Open Source

elastic.co

ElectricFlow

Electric Cloud

Release automation

Free Version
Available

electric-cloud.com

Elide

JSON<-JPA web service library

Open Source

elide.io

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

Finagle

Twitter

RPC for high-concurrency JVM servers (Java+Scala APIs, uses Futures)

Finatra

Twitter

Scala HTTP services built on TwitterServer and Finagle

Open Source

twitter.github.io/finatra

FlexJSON

JSON serialization

Open Source

flexjson.sourceforge.net

FreeMarker

Apache Software
Foundation

Server-side Java web templating (static+dynamic)

Open Source

freemarker.org

FusionReactor

Integral

JVM APM with production debugging and crash protection

Free Trial

fusion-reactor.com

GemFire

Pivotal

Distributed in-memory data grid (using Apache Geode)

Open Source

pivotal.io/big-data/pivotalgemfire

GlassFish

Oracle

Java application server

Open Source

glassfish.java.net

Go

ThoughtWorks

Continuous delivery server

Open Source

go.cd

Google Web Toolkit

(GWT)

Google

Java->Ajax

Open Source

gwtproject.org

Gradle

Gradle

Build automation (Groovy-based scripting of task DAGs)

Open Source

gradle.org

Grails

Groovy web framework (like Ruby on Rails)

Open Source

grails.org

GridGain

GridGain Systems

In-memory data grid (Apache Ignite + enterprise management,

security, monitoring)

Free Tier Available

gridgain.com

GSON

Google

JSON serialization

Open Source

github.com/google/gson

Guava

Google

Java libraries from Google (collections, caching, concurrency,

annotations, I/O, more)

Open Source

github.com/google/guava

Guice

Google

Dependency injection framework

Open Source

github.com/google/guice

H2

Java SQL database engine

Open Source

h2database.com

Hazelcast Enterprise
Platform

Hazelcast *

Distibuted in-memory data grid (with JCache implementation)

30 Days

hazelcast.com

Heroku Platform

Salesforce *

PaaS

Free Tier Available

heroku.com

Hibernate ORM

Java ORM with JPA and native APIs

Open Source

hibernate.org/orm

Hibernate Search

Full-text search for objects (indexes domain model with

annotations, returns objects from free text queries)

Open Source

hibernate.org/search

Hoplon

ClojureScript web framework

Open Source

hoplon.io

HyperForm

HyperGrid
(formerly DCHQ)

Container composition platform

Free Tier Available

dchq.io

Hystrix

Netflix

Latency and fault tolerance library

Open Source

github.com/Netflix/Hystrix

IceFaces

IceSoft

JSF framework

Open Source

icesoft.org

Illuminate

jClarity

Java-focused APM with machine learning & autosummarization

14 Days

jclarity.com

Immunio

Immunio

Runtime application self-protection with Java support

30 days

immun.io

Infinispan

Red Hat

Distributed in-memory key/value store (Java embeddable)

Open Source

infinispan.org

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

Informatica

Informatica

Data integration and management

informatica.com

IntelliJ IDEA

JetBrains *

IDE

Free Tier Available

jetbrains.com/idea

iText

iText Group

PDF manipulation from Java

Open Source

itextpdf.com

ItsNat

Jose Maria Arranz

Web framework (Swing-inspired, Single Page Interface (multiple

states=appPages) concept)

Open Source

itsnat.sourceforge.net

Jackson

JSON processing

Open Source

wiki.fasterxml.com/
JacksonHome

Jahia Platform

Jahia Solutions
Group

Enterprise CMS/portal (Jackrabbit compliant)

open-source
version available

jahia.com/home.html

Janino

Lightweight Java compiler

Open Source

janino-compiler.github.io/janino

JavaFX

Oracle

Java GUI library

Open Source

docs.oracle.com/javase/8/
javase-clienttechnologies.htm

JavaServer Faces

Oracle

Java Web Framework

Open Source

oracle.com

JAX-RS

Oracle

REST spec for Java

Open Source

jax-rs-spec.java.net

JBoss Data Grid

Red Hat

In-memory distributed NoSQL data store

Free Tier Available

redhat.com

JBoss EAP

Red Hat

Java EE 7 platform

Open Source

developers.redhat.com/
products/eap/overviewith

JD

Java decompiler

Open Source

jd.benow.ca

jDBI

SQL library for Java

Open Source

jdbi.org

JDeveloper

Oracle

IDE

Freeware

oracle.com

JDOM

XMLin Java (with DOM and SAX integration)

Open Source

jdom.org

Jelastic

Jelastic

Multi-cloud PaaS (with Java support)

Free Tiers Available

jelastic.com

Jenkins

Cloudbees

CI server

Open Source

jenkins.io

Jersey

Oracle

RESTful web services in Java (JAX-RS with enhancements)

Open Source

jersey.java.net

Jetty

Eclipse Foundation

Servlet engine + http server (with non-http protocols)

Open Source

eclipse.org/jetty

JFreeChart

Object Refinery
Limited

Java charting library

Open Source

jfree.org/jfreechart

JGroups

Red Hat

Java multicast messaging library

Open Source

jgroups.org

jHiccup

Azul Systems

Show performance issues caused by JVM (as opposed to app code)

Open Source

azulsystems.com

JMS Adapters for

.NET or BizTalk by
JNBridge

JNBridge

JMS Integration with .NET or BizTalk

30 Days

jnbridge.com/software/jmsadapter-for-biztalk/overview

JNBridgePro

JNBridge

Java and .NET interoperability

30 Days

jnbridge.com/software/
jnbridgepro/overview

Joda

Date&time library for Java

Open Source

joda.org/joda-time

jOOQ

Data Geekery

Non-ORM SQL in Java

Open Source

jooq.org

jOOL

Data Geekery

Extension of Java 8 lambda support (tuples, more parameters,

sequential and ordered streams)

Open Source

github.com/jOOQ/jOOL

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

Joyent

Joyent

Container-native infrastructure with Java images

joyent.com

JProfiler

EJ Technologies

Java profiling

Free for Open

Source and
Nonprofit

ej-technologies.com/products/
jprofiler/overview.html

JRebel

ZeroTurnaround *

Class hot-loading (in running JVM)

Free Trial

zeroturnaround.com/software/jrebel

JReport

Jinfonet

Reporting, dashboard, analytics, BI for Java

Free Trial

jinfonet.com

JSF

Oracle

Java spec for server-side component-based UI

Open Source

javaserverfaces.java.net

JSP

Oracle

Server-side Java web templating (static+dynamic)

Open Source

jsp.java.net

JUnit

Unit testing framework (mocks Java objects)

Open Source

junit.org

Kubernetes

Container orchestration

Open Source

kubernetes.io

Lagom

Lightbend

Reactive microservices framework (Java, Scala)

Open Source

lightbend.com/lagom

LaunchDarkly

Catamorphic

Feature flag platform

30 days

launchdarkly.com

Liferay Digital
Experience Platform

Liferay

Enterprise CMS/portal

Open Source
Version Available

liferay.com

Lift

Scala web framework with ORM, strong view isolation,

emphasis on security

Open Source

liftweb.net

Lightbend Reactive
Platform

Lightbend

Dev+prod suite for reactive JVM applications

(Akka+Play+Lagom+Spark)

Open Source

lightbend.com/platform

Logback

QOS.ch

Java logging framework (Log4j take two)

Open Source

logback.qos.ch

MarkLogic 8

MarkLogic

Multi-model enterprise NoSQLdatabase

Free Developer
Version

marklogic.com

Mendix Platform

Mendix

Enterprise aPaaS

Free Trial

mendix.com/applicationplatform-as-a-service/

Mockito

Unit testing framework (mocks Java objects)

Open Source

mockito.org

MongoDB

MongoDB

Document-oriented DBMS

Open Source

mongodb.com

MyBatis

JDBC persistence framework

Open Source

mybatis.org/mybatis-3

MyEclipse

Genuitec

IDE (Java EE + web)

30 Days

genuitec.com/products/
myeclipse

NetBeans

Oracle

IDE

Open Source

netbeans.org

Netty

Event-driven, non-blocking JVM framework for protocol clients

& servers

Open Source

netty.io

New Relic

New Relic

APM with Java agent

14 Days

newrelic.com

Nexus Repository

Sonatype

Binary/artifact Repository

Open Source

sonatype.org/nexus

NGINX

NGINX

Web server, load balancer, reverse proxy

Open Source

nginx.com

Ninja Framework

Full-stack web framework for Java

Nuxeo Platform

Nuxeo

Structured+richcContent management platform

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

ninjaframework.org
30 days

nuxeo.com

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

OmniFaces

JSF utility library

Open Source

omnifaces.org

OpenCV

Computer vision libraries (with Java interfaces)

Open Source

opencv.org

Oracle Coherence

Oracle

In-memory ditributed data grid

Open Source

oracle.com

Oracle Database 12c

Oracle

Relational DBMS

oracle.com/technetwork/
database/index.html

OSGi

OSGi Alliance

Dynamic component system spec for Java

osgi.org

OutSystems

OutSystems

Rapid application development platform

Free Tier Available

outsystems.com

OverOps

OverOps (formerly
Takipi)

JVM agent for production debugging

Free Tier Available

overops.com

Palamida

Palamida

Security and open-source scanning and management

contact for demo

palamida.com

Payara Server

Payara

Java EE application server (enchanced GlassFish)

Open Source

payara.fish/home

Pedestal

Clojure Web Framework

Open Source

github.com/pedestal/pedestal

Percona Server

Percona

High-performance drop-in MySQL or MongoDB replacement

Open Source

percona.com

Play

Lightbend

Java + Scala web framework (stateless, async, built on Akka)

Open Source

playframework.com

Plumbr

Plumbr

Memory Leak Detection, GC Analysis, Thread & Query Monitoring

14 days

plumbr.eu

Predix

GE Software

Industrial IoT platform with Java SDK (on Cloud Foundry)

ge.com/digital/predix

PrimeFaces

PrimeTek

UI components for JSF

Open Source

primefaces.org

Project Reactor

Pivotal

Non-blocking, async JVM library (based on Reactive Streams spec)

Open Source

projectreactor.io

PubNub

PubNub

Real-timemobile, web, and IoT APIs

free tier available

pubnub.com

Puppet

Puppet Labs

Infrastructure automation / configuration management

Open Source

puppet.com

Push Technology

Push Technology

Real-time messaging (web, mobile, IoT)

contact for more

info

pushtechnology.com

Qoppa PDF Studio

Qoppa

PDF manipulation from Java

demos available

qoppa.com

QueryDSL

Mysema

DSL for multiple query targets (JPA, JDO, SQL, Lucene,

MongoDB, Java Collections)

Open Source

querydsl.com

Race Catcher

Thinking Software

Dynamic race detection

7 days

thinkingsoftware.com

Redis

Redis Labs

In-memory key-value data structure store (use as database,

cache, message broker)

Open Source

redis.io

Rhino

Mozilla

JavaScript implemention in Java (for embedded JS)

Open Source

developer.mozilla.org/en-US/
docs/Mozilla/Projects/Rhino

Ribbon

Netflix

RPC library with load balancing

Open Source

github.com/Netflix/ribbon

RichFaces

Red Hat

UI components for JSF

Open Source

richfaces.jboss.org

Ring

Clojure Web Framework

Open Source

github.com/ring-clojure/ring

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

RxJava

Netflix

Reactive extension for JVM (extends observer pattern)

Open Source

github.com/ReactiveX/RxJava

Salesforce App
Cloud

Salesforce

PaaS with app marketplace

free developer
instance

developer.salesforce.com

Sauce Labs
Automated Testing
Platform

Sauce Labs

Browser and mobile test automation (Selenium, Appium) with

Java interface

Open Source

saucelabs.com/open-source

SBT (Simple Build

Tool)

Lightbend

Build tool for Scala and Java (with build scripting in Scala DSL)

Scalatra

Scala web microframework

Open Source

scalatra.org

Selenide

Codeborne

UI tests in Java (Selenium WebDriver)

Open Source

selenide.org

Selenium

Browser automation with Junit and TestNG integration

Open Source

seleniumhq.org

Site24x7

Zoho

Website, server, application performance monitoring

30 days

site24x7.com

Sl4j

QOS.ch

Logging for Java

Open Source

slf4j.org

SmartGWT

Isomorphic
Software

Java->Ajax with rapid dev tools, UI components, multi-device

60 Days

smartclient.com

SonarQube

SonarSource

Software quality platform (unit testing, code metrics, architecture

and complexity analysis, coding rule checks, more)

Open Source

sonarqube.org

Spark Framework

Lightweight Java 8 web app framework

Open Source

sparkjava.com

Split

Split Software

Feature flag platform

Free Trial

split.io

Spock

Test and specification framework for Java and Groovy

Open Source

spockframework.org

Spray

Lightbend

REST for Scala/Akka

Open Source

spray.io

Spring Boot

Pivotal

REST web services framework (opinionated, rapid spinup)

Open Source

projects.spring.io/spring-boot

Spring Cloud

Pivotal

Distributed systems framework (declarative, opinionated)

Open Source

cloud.spring.io

Spring Framework

Pivotal

Enterpise Java platform (large family of (convention-overconfiguration) services, including dependency injection, MVC,
messaging, testing, AOP, data access, distributed computing
services, etc.)

Spring MVC

Pivotal

Server-side web framework

Open Source

docs.spring.io/spring/docs/
current/spring-frameworkreference/html/mvc.html

SteelCentral

Riverbed

APM

30-90 days

riverbed.com

Stormpath

Stormpath *

Identity and user management

Free Version
Available

stormpath.com

SWT

Eclipse Foundation

Java UI widget toolkit

Open Source

eclipse.org/swt

Sysdig

Draios

Container monitoring

Open Source

sysdig.com

Tasktop Dev

Tasktop

In-IDE ALM tool (commercial version of Eclipse Mylyn)

30 Days

tasktop.com/tasktop-dev

TayzGrid

Alachisoft

In-memory data grid (JCache compliant)

Open Source

tayzgrid.com

Teradata

Teradata

Data warehousing, analytics, lake, SQL on Hadoop and Cassandra,

Big Data appliances, R integration, workload management

Free Developer
Version

teradata.com

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

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DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

PRODUCT

COMPANY

TYPE

FREE TRIAL

WEBSITE

TestNG

Java unit testing framework (JUnit-inspired)

Open Source

testng.org

ThingWorx

PTC

IoT platform with Java SDK

Free Trial

developer.thingworx.com

Thymeleaf

Thymeleaf

Server-side Java web template engine

Open Source

thymeleaf.org

TrueSight Pulse

BMC

Infrastructure monitoring

14 Days

bmc.com/truesightpulse

Twilio

Twilio

Messaging APIs (text, voice, VoIP)

Free Key Available

twilio.com

Upsource

JetBrains *

Code review

Free 10-User Plan

jetbrains.com/upsource

Vaadin

Vaadin

Server-side Java->HTML5

Open Source

vaadin.com

Vert.x

Event-driven, non-blocking JVM framework

Open Source

vertx.io

Visual COBOL

Microfocus *

COBOL accessibility from Java (with COBO->Java bytecode compilation)

30 Days

microfocus.com/products/
visual-cobol

VisualVM

Oracle

JVM Monitoring

Open Source

visualvm.java.net

vmlens

vmlens

Java race condition catcher

Free Trial

vmlens.com

Waratek

Waratek

Java security (runtime application self-protection (RASP))

30 days

waratek.com

WebLogic

Oracle

Java application server

oracle.com/middleware/
weblogic/index.html

WebSphere
Application Server

IBM

Java application server

www-03.ibm.com/software/
products/en/appserv-was

WebSphere eXtreme
Scale

IBM

In-memory data grid

Free Trial

ibm.com

WildFly

Red Hat

Java application server

Open Source

wildfly.org

WildFly Swarm

Red Hat

Uber JAR builder (with trimmed WildFly app server)

Open Source

wildfly.org/swarm

Wiremock

HTTP mocking

Open Source

wiremock.org

WSO2 Application
Server

WSO2

Web application server

Open Source

wso2.com/products/applicationserver/

WSO2 Microservices
Framework for Java

WSO2

Microservices framework for Java

Open Source

wso2.com/products/
microservices-framework-for-java

XebiaLabs XL

XebiaLabs

Deployment automation + release management

Free Trial

xebialabs.com

XRebel

ZeroTurnaround *

Java web app profiler

14 Days

zeroturnaround.com

Xstream

XML serialization

Open Source

x-stream.github.io

YourKit Java Profiler

YourKit

Java CPU & memory profiler

15 Days

yourkit.com

Zing

Azul Systems

JVM with unique pauseless GC

Free Tier Available

azul.com/products/zing

ZK Framework

Zkoss

Enterprise Java web framework

Open Source

zkoss.org

Zulu

Azul Systems

Enterprise-grade OpenJDK build

Open Source

azul.com/products/zulu

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

DZONE.COM/GUIDES

GLOSSARY
12-FACTOR APP A set of guidelines
for building hosted applications that
focus on scalability, automation, and
compatibility with cloud platforms.
APPLICATION PROGRAM
INTERFACE (API) A set of tools
for determining how software
components should act within an
application.
ARRAY An object that contains a
fixed number of variables, the number
of which are established when the
array is created.
ATTRIBUTE A particular characteristic
of an object, which is defined by that
object's class.
CLASS A blueprint used to create
objects by establishing what
attributes are shared between each
object in that class.
CLOUD PLATFORM A service offered
by a third party that deploys and
hosts applications on their hardware.
COMPILER A program that
transforms programming language
code to machine-readable bytecode
so that it can be read and executed by
a computer.
CONCURRENCY The ability to run
several applications, or several parts
of an application, at the same time.
CONSTRUCTOR A subroutine within
a class that is called in order to create
an object from that class.
CONSTRUCTOR CHAINING The act
of calling a constructor to create an
object by using another constructor
from the same class.
CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION The
process of combining and testing

55

DZONES 2016 GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA

changes to an application as often as

possible.

functions, called anonymous

functions, to be written without
belonging to a class.

DEPENDENCY An instance in a JAR

where classes called from packages
outside the JAR must be explicitly
stated in the code rather than being
automatically included.

LIBRARY A collection of commonly

used pieces of code that can be used
in any application that uses that
programming language.

DESIGN PATTERN A reusable, highlevel solution to a common problem in

an application or architecture.

LOG A file with information on

everything that has happened while
an application has been running.

EXCEPTION An interruption that

occurs when a program is running
that alters the way the program is
normally run.

METHOD A named piece of code

that can be called at any time by
using its name.

EXCEPTION HANDLING A
programming practice to ensure that
any exceptions do not cause the
program to stop running.
HASH FUNCTION A way to create a
simplified representation of a large
amount of data to make it easily and
quickly searchable, such as assigning
objects to integers.
IMMUTABLE OBJECT Any object that
cannot be modified once it has been
created.
JAVA An object-oriented
programming language that can be
deployed on a variety of platforms,
developed by Sun Microsystems and
now under the stewardship of Oracle.
JAVA ARCHIVE (JAR) A file used to
aggregate several Java classes and
resources into one file in order to
easily distribute those classes for use
on the Java platform.
JAVA DEVELOPMENT KIT (JDK) A
free set of tools, including a compiler,
provided by Oracle, the owners of Java.

MICROSERVICES ARCHITECTURE
An architecture for an application
that is built with several modular
pieces, which are deployed
separately and communicate with
each other, rather than deploying
one single piece of software.
OBJECTS An instance of a class,
which has different attribute values
than other objects in its class.
POLYMORPHISM A condition
in which objects can take on
several forms in an application.
All objects in Java are considered
polymorphic since all objects are all
implementations of classes.
REPOSITORY A data structure
where directories, files, and metadata
can be stored and managed.
SPRING FRAMEWORK An opensource collection of tools for building
web applications in Java.
STREAM A sequence of data that is
read from a source and then written
to a new destination.

JAVA VIRTUAL MACHINE (JVM)

Abstracted software that allows a
computer to run a Java program.

SYNCHRONIZATION A condition
in which multiple threads that share
crucial resources run at the same
time.

LAMBDA EXPRESSION A new

feature in Java 8 which allows

TOMCAT An open-source web server

technology for Java applications.

DZONES GUIDE TO MODERN JAVA