Technology
This page lists the technologies and tools chosen for the project
Technology Choices
Programming language - Java
Java 11 is chosen as programming language.
- Java is well known in the energy sector
- Developers are available
- Java is familiar within LFE projects
Java build environment - Gradle
For building the applications we use Gradle. Gradle is good suppored in CI/CD.
Microservice deployment - Docker
Microservices are deployed as Linux based Docker container. Advantages of deployment in Docker container:
- Deployment is independent of deployment platform/OS
- Well supported for cloud deployment
- Tooling readily availabe
- Open source
- Scalable, redundant
- Images can be distributed easily
Database - BaseX
For the database BaseX](https://basex.org/) is chosen on following arguments:
Pros
- Native XML database
- Fully Open Source
- BSD license
- Easy to setup using available Docker image
- Cross-platform available
- Active community
- Multiple API’s, like REST(ful) and HTTP
- ACID guarantees
- Many usage examples available in different programming languages
Cons
- No clear use cases using BaseX
- Versioning is not out-of-the-box available. Need to use a second database to create ‘versioning’, which creates an archive database and a current database. And by using RESTXQ is relatively easy to create a versioning mechanism. BaseX gave SirixDB as a good alternative in case we want a NoSQL database with versioning mechanism.
XML Processing - Schematron
Pros
- There is an XQuery module for integration in BaseX
- Rule-based approach. If assertion fails, a message is being supplied
- Based on XSLT and xPath, so very flexible in manipulating/processing XML
- Suggesting XML fixes
- Referencing other XML documents as constraint validation
- XSL Processor like Saxon-HE is easy to use
Cons
- Not an application itself, needs a XSLT processor like Saxon-HE which is also open-source
Java framework - Quarkus
For the framework to be used with Java we choose Quarkus.
Pros
- Java stack, and working experience is avaiable in the community
- Open Source
- Hot reload for quick development
- Less verbose code when developing REST API’s, compared to for example Java Spring
- Tailored for GraalVM (universal VM), which is also very interesting for us (usage of resources)
- Huge decrease of memory huge compared to traditional cloud-native stacks like Java Spring.
- Huge decrease in response times compared to traditional cloud-native stacks like Java Spring.
- Backed by RedHat
- Quickly settings up microservices with REST APIs
When looking at the memory usage (and response times) of Quarkus, it’s definitely interesting for us. Also take a look at this comparison with Java Spring
Because CoMPAS is an application which also should run locally, memory usage is an important aspect. Together with being a modern microservice framework, backed by RedHat and being a Java framework (which we are having experience with) it’s the best choice for now!
Cons
- Doesn’t support full set of some EE standards, like Enterprise JavaBeans. Expected is that it’s not a game breaker for us.
- Relatively new technology, framework could contain some “rookie mistakes”. On the other hand, multiple researches are stating the maturity of the framework it achieved in this short time.
- Not much developers are acquainted with Quarkus compared to e.g. the Spring framework.
Source control - Github
We choose github for source control. This is good practice for open source development. The CoMPAS repositories can be found at https://github.com/com-pas/
CI/CD - Github actions
We choose Github Actions as mechanism for CI/CD.
Pros
- Upcoming tool, really active in developing
- Free tool for public Github repositories (which CoMPAS is)
- Integrates perfectly with Github repositories
Cons
- Software is proprietary
- Adoption is growing within Alliander
Tool advise
This section lists the development tooling that is advised. Of course developers are free to use their own developement tooling
SDE - Microsoft Visual Studio Code
Microsoft Visual Studio Code is a versatile develpment environment supporting many languages.