The Power of Spring Boot: Why We Build Enterprise Backends on Java

Difference Between Startup and Enterprise

In a startup trying to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) within a four-week window, one may expect the engineers to be working on the backend development in Node.js (JavaScript) or Python languages. Such languages are excellent for quickly coming up with MVP ideas. The code is loosely typed and very flexible and allows a small team to come up with an application within days.

But there is a huge difference in engineering when going from a situation when one needs to develop an app which supports 100 daily users to a situation when one needs to develop an enterprise ecosystem which performs 100,000 financial transactions per hour.

And indeed, once moving from the "Startup" phase to the "Enterprise" phase, the risk model of the software changes dramatically. In the startup, one cares about quickly launching the project; in the enterprise, one fears that the servers may crash during a huge holiday retail period.

That is why, in Isaii Technologies, we develop our backend architecture for the Bill Buddy POS and HRMS systems in Java and Spring Boot.

The Physics of Scale: Multi-Threading

In order to explain why Java is the most common choice for business applications, one needs to examine the way the servers process incoming traffic.

Frameworks such as Node.js are based on the principle of "single-threaded event loop". One might consider an example where the restaurant hires only one, extremely fast, waiter who is able to serve many tables at once when customers are making simple requests, such as ordering the menu. The problem is that, as soon as one of the clients begins asking complex questions that require 5 minutes to answer, no tables receive service. This phenomenon is known as "blocking the thread" in software engineering, and it results in extreme latency when there is heavy traffic.

Java utilizes multi-threading.

If a great influx of requests happens simultaneously, for instance, at 9:00 AM, when 5,000 retail cashiers enter the system to log in, the JVM launches several execution threads. It is equivalent to the case when the restaurant hires 5,000 new waiters right after the rush begins.

The Spring Boot Ecosystem: You Don’t Need Any Duct Tape

Besides the sheer power of the Java programming language, the reason we choose to use Spring Boot is that it offers us a well-tested opinionated ecosystem for building enterprise software.

While developers develop backends using simpler frameworks, they need to cobble together many open-source libraries to fulfill all the needs of an enterprise application such as security, database mapping, and API routing. It results in “duct tape architecture,” which is highly susceptible to security vulnerabilities.

Spring Boot has the following enterprise features in-built:

Spring Security: An enterprise security standard, which enables us to set up role-based authentication and authorization of your HR & CRM modules.

Hibernate / Spring Data JPA: A perfect Object Relational Mapping (ORM) layer that will allow our backend to interact with our MySQL database in an efficient and secure manner with no data loss in complex transactions.

Microservices Architecture Ready: Since Spring Boot applications run as standalone microservices, when your E-Commerce module scales up in a holiday sale, you do not have to worry about scaling up other modules like HRMS or Transport modules.

Strict Typing: Write Once, Never Worry
Enterprise applications cannot tolerate "silent" mistakes. In a loosely typed language such as JavaScript, a programmer could inadvertently attempt to subtract a word from a number. It may work and go live, just to crash your entire server three weeks down the road upon hitting a particular corner case.

Isaii uses Java, a strongly typed, compiled language. If an Isaii developer attempts to write some logic violating the rigorous nature of the system, the Java compiler will simply refuse to compile the application. The mistake will be detected by the machine while developing, ensuring that what you get in your live enterprise environment is perfect code structurally.

Building for the Future Decade

It is not only about building software for today when you develop custom enterprise software. Your business will use the software as its operational infrastructure for the next decade.

All the fancy and trendy frameworks may get obsolete with time, but Java will be the undisputed framework of Fortune 500 companies. By developing custom ecosystems using Java and Spring Boot, Isaii Technologies provides you with a guarantee that your software will have infinite scalability, security, and stability no matter how much your business will grow.

Are you ready to build a backend that will not fail?

Contact Isaii Technologies now to book an architecture review session and learn how our Spring Boot ecosystems can benefit your business in the future.