Getting Started with Eclipse MicroProfile, Part 8: The Conclusion

Many times, one of the hardest parts of getting started with a particular piece of technology is figuring out how to get started. :) In this series, I’ve used an extremely simple project to show how to do just that with a number of MicroProfile implementations. Obviously, a real application will have many more concerns than we dealt with in this application, but what this effort gave us is working, runnable, and testable build for six different MicroProfile implementations. What I’d like to do in this final installment in the series, is give some closing thoughts.

In case you missed a post, here are links to each part:

As I noted, we have hardly scratched the surface of the MicroProfile specification or, more generally, a Java EE Jakarta EE application. There are things like DataSources, clustering, transactions, etc. that we didn’t even attempt to address. What your application needs will likely drive, at least in part, which implementation you choose. For example, if you want to use JSF, JNDI, JTA, etc., you might prefer one of the more…​ traditional implementations (Payara Micro, Thorntail, TomEE or OpenLiberty). However, if you aren’t using any of those, then perhaps the smaller CDI-based implementations (Hammock, or Helidon) might be more appealing. Either way, if you don’t have any of these technologies already in place, it would probably be prudent to experiment with them and find the best fit.

One thing that struck me about each of the implementations is the variation in startup times. Microservices being what they are, startup times can be a significant concern. I’m not a performance expert, so I won’t attempt a rigorous analysis, but I will say, just based on wall time, the Helidon seemed the fastest, and OpenLiberty was the slowest. Given the difference in the nature of the two implementations, I guess that’s not too surprising, but the size of the difference (less than a second versus north of 15) in my admittedly non-scientific tests was. Is that a valid concern? Again, your needs will vary, so take a look and decide for yourself.

Regardless of your implementation choice, there are several great specifications that make up the profile. Two that intrigue/excite me the most are JWT Auth and Config, both of which I’ll look at in future posts, but this is it for now. What do you think of MicroProfile? Was this getting started series helpful? Hit me up on Twitter and let me know what you think!