Kirk Knoernschild

Agility Through Modular Architectures - From Modular Monoliths to Microservices

Monday, 9:00 AM EST

No single architectural style solves all needs. Though microservices have taken the developer community by storm recently, they are not always the optimal solution. In some cases, a more monolithic architecture may be more suitable short term. Or perhaps a more traditional system of web services that allow you to leverage existing infrastructure investment is preferable. Fortunately, proven architectural practices allow you to build software that transcends specific architectural alternatives and develop a software system that gives the development team the agility to shift between different architectural styles without undergoing a time-consuming, costly, and resource intensive refactoring effort. Modularity is the cornerstone of these alternatives.

In this workshop, we will examine the benefits and drawbacks of several different modular architecture alternatives and we’ll explore the infrastructure, skills, and practices necessary to build software with each of these alternatives. There will be straightforward exercises and demonstrations that show the alternatives and how to create software that provides the architectural agility to easily shift between architectural alternatives.

Topics discussed include:

• Defining architectural agility
• Dissecting the monolith
• Exploring microservices
• Other architectural alternatives, including traditional web services
• Development infrastructure requirements
• Measuring architectural integrity

Roadmap to Refactoring the Monolith

Wednesday, 9:00 AM EST

Monoliths are out and microservices are in. Not so fast. Many of the benefits attributed uniquely to microservices are actually a byproduct of other architectural paradigms with modularity at their core. In this session, we’ll look at several of the benefits we expect from today’s architectures and explore these benefits in the context of various modern architectural paradigms. We’ll also examine different technologies that are applying these principles to build the platforms and frameworks we will use going forward.

Along the way, we’ll explore how to refactor a monolithic application using specific modularity patterns and illustrate how an underlying set of principles span several architectural paradigms. The result is an unparalleled degree of architectural agility to move between different architectural paradigms.

Architecture in Anger

Wednesday, 11:00 AM EST

Big architecture up front is not sustainable in today's technology climate where expectations are high for delivering high quality software more quickly than ever before. To accept change, teams are moving to agile methods. But agile methods provide little architectural guidance. Attempts to define the architectural vision for a system early in the development lifecycle does not work. In this session, we provide practical guidance for software architecture for agile projects.

We will explore several principles that help us create more flexible and adaptable software systems. We’ll expose the true essence of what’s meant when we say “architectural agility.” And we’ll explore the real goal of software architecture and how we can accommodate architectural change to help increase architectural agility.

Modern Java Frameworks for Building Microservices

Wednesday, 1:30 PM EST

Microservice architecture is a modern architectural approach that increases development and delivery agility by focusing on building modular services. The framework we use has a tremendous impact on how quickly and easily we can deliver servcies. New frameworks are emerging that embrace new approaches for helping us deliver microservices.

In this session, we will explore some modern Java frameworks for building microservices (aka micro frameworks). Example frameworks you may see include Dropwizard, Ratpack, Spark, Ninja, RestExpress, Play, Restlet, and RestX. We'll demonstrate each framework by using a programming kata to build the same service using several different frameworks. Optionally, bring your own laptop, clone the github repo, and you can build the services along with me. To do this, you must have Java 8+ and Gradle.

Building 12 Factor Apps with Java

Wednesday, 3:15 PM EST

The way we build and deliver software is changing. We must deliver software more quickly than ever before and traditional approaches to software architecture, infrastructure and methodology do not allow us to meet demand. We’ve reached the limits of agility through process improvement alone, and further increases demand we focus on improving architecture, infrastructure, and methodology simultaneously. 12 Factor is an app development methodology for building modern apps in the modern era.

Building modern apps requires modern methods and 12 Factor is an app development methodology that helps development teams build software by emphasizing development practices that meld together modern architectural paradigms with agile practices like continuous delivery for deployment to cloud platforms. In this session, we’ll examine the 12 Factors and explore how to apply them to apps built using Java.

Migrating to Java 9 - Jigsaw's Architectural Impact

Wednesday, 5:00 PM EST

Java 9 with the Jigsaw module system is here. In this session, we'll explore the basics of the Jigsaw module system and examine the impact it will have on how we build Java applications. We will dig into it's major features, including dependency management and Jigsaw services. Once we understand Jigsaw's basics, we will explore what it's going to take to migrate existing Java application to Java 9 and leverage Jigsaw.

Jigsaw's impact stands to be consequential. Jigsaw will restrict application code from accessing non-published JDK classes (ie. sun.com), require you to be explicit in declaring your dependencies, and more. We will explore Jigsaw basics and then dig into the impact Jigsaw will have on migrating existing Java applications to Java 9.