APIs, microservices, and containers are becoming standard for running enterprise applications in the cloud, but many companies have existing monolithic applications running in their data centers. It’s difficult to figure out what to move, where to move it, and when. In the coming weeks of September, IBM is hosting two free conferences that will include a range of developer-focused talks and labs about refactoring or moving your enterprise Java applications to containers with Kubernetes in the cloud:
Here is a selection of what you can learn…
Best practices for writing microservices (Emily Jiang)
If you create microservices, you might be wondering whether there are best practices. Yes, the Twelve-Factor App is the widely adopted methodology. The Twelve-Factor App aims to clarify the boundary between application and infrastructure; minimize divergence between development and production; and enable your microservices to scale up or down without significant changes to tooling, architecture, or development practices.
But the Twelve-Factor App methodology just defines the theory; there is no known implementation. Emily will demonstrate how MicroProfile and Kubernetes can implement the 12 factors.
For example, one of the 12 factors is to externalize the configuration of microservices. MicroProfile Config enables you to externalize configuration so that when you change the configuration of a microservice, you don’t need to repackage it. Similarly, MicroProfile Config can help with port binding (another of the 12 factors) so that microservices can communicate with each other when deployed to the cloud. You can specify new port numbers in Kubernetes ConfigMap, and MicroProfile Config gives the correct information to the deployed microservices.
To find out more, come to Emily’s talk “On-stage hacking: Build 12-Factor microservices in an hour” on Sep. 24, at 11am, at the Application Modernization Technology Conference, in which she will create two microservices and deploy them to Minikube, and demonstrate the 12 factors. She will also present “A modern & smart way to build cloud-native microservices” on Sep. 9, at 3:45pm, at the European Application, Platform & Modernization Hursley Summit.
Build cloud-native applications with Eclipse Codewind (Tim Deboer)
As enterprises move toward microservices and cloud-native development, there are a host of new technologies and skills that developers need to learn. Eclipse Codewind helps bridge this gap by providing support for building cloud-native applications directly in the developer’s IDE of choice. There’s no learning curve because the tools work just like the local development tools that they’re used to using. Codewind supports Visual Studio Code (VS Code) and Eclipse, and also provides a fully hosted development environment through the Eclipse Che IDE.
Codewind provides integrated support for Appsody and Kabanero collections, which enable developers to rapidly create applications in several languages based on predefined stacks that meet corporate standards. These applications are always run within containers, so that you know exactly how it’ll behave in production. But the behaviors that developers expect haven’t changed: code changes take immediate effect; debugging and console output work. Further along in the lifecycle, Codewind includes comprehensive tools for performance testing and benchmarking, and OpenAPI code generation for defining well-behaved REST interfaces.
To find out more, come to Tim’s talk “IBM Cloud Pak for Applications: Introducing Eclipse Codewind” on Sep. 9, at 4:40pm, at the European Application, Platform & Modernization Hursley Summit, or on Sep. 24, at 4:10pm, at the Application Modernization Technology Conference.
Get the latest on Jakarta EE 8 (Kevin Sutter)
We did it! As of 8:44pm on August 26, the ballot for the Jakarta EE 8 Full Platform Specification was submitted for approval! This milestone was the culmination of months of work by many people throughout the Community to prepare the specifications, APIs, Javadocs, and TCKs for the Jakarta EE 8 release.
Over the next couple of weeks, all of these specification ballots will conclude, and the various artifacts will be promoted for public consumption. The goal is to have all of Jakarta EE 8 ready to be announced at the JakartaOne Livestream Conference on Sep 10. Monitoring the progress of this effort is easy. Once the ballots are completed, the various artifacts will be promoted to their respective homes.
If you want to learn more about Jakarta EE (past, present, and future), come to Kevin’s “Jakarta for DummEEs!” session on Sep. 24, at 3:10pm, at the Application Modernization Technology Conference.
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The events are free, but seating is limited. We look forward to meeting you!
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