Preface

Despite being a technology born in 1995, Java is still alive and well.

Every now and then, an article pops up saying that Java is old and should be dismissed and replaced by other languages. But the reality is, Java is here to stay.

There are many reasons for that, but the most important is that it just works: it solves common issues in the software development world so well.

Java technology is the main topic of this book. However, in each of the chapters, we will have the opportunity to talk about many different ideas, and I think that most of them go beyond the Java programming language and are likely to be useful in other situations too.

Indeed, in this book, I've tried to distill concepts around many aspects of software development, particularly development in the enterprise world, in big and complex businesses and projects. The goal is to give you insights by focusing on the most important topics. Of course, given the breadth and complexity of the topics, it would be impossible to take a deep dive into every aspect. But you will be provided with some good starting points, and you can easily find more resources if you want further details.

Following more or less the timeline of a typical software project, we will start with the fundamentals of software architecture, from requirement gathering to modeling architecture basics. We will also look at the most common development models, including, of course, DevOps.

In the second section of the book, we will explore some common software architecture patterns. This will include Java architecture patterns, as well as middlewares (both for traditional and cloud-native approaches) and other essential parts of software architecture, such as integration, user interfaces, and data stores.

In the third and final section of the book, we will cover some additional topics, including cross-cutting concerns (such as security, monitoring, and tracing) as well as some considerations around software life cycle management. Finally, we will have a quick look at the latest version of the Java technology.