eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
WSO2, a service-oriented architecture middleware provider, has delivered a new release of its Microservices Framework for Java (MSF4J).
WSO2’s MSF4J is a lightweight, high-performance framework for developing and running microservices.
According to Matt McLarty, vice president at CA Technologies and a software architect who leads the company’s API Academy, “A microservice is an independently deployable component of bounded scope that supports interoperability through message-based communication.”
McLarty, who is co-author of the book Microservice Architecture, said a “microservice architecture is a style of engineering highly automated, evolvable software systems made up of capability-aligned microservices.”
Among the new features in MSF4J is the addition of support for the Spring Framework. The Spring Framework provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications. WSO2 added it because of developer demand dependency injection support, Afkham Azeez, senior director of platform architecture at WSO2, said in a blog post on the new release. In software engineering, dependency injection is the concept of providing the objects or dependencies that an object needs instead of having it construct them itself.
Spring is a popular framework among developers because it provides a very simple dependency injection mechanism, which makes life easy for developers, Azeez said.
“MSF4J now supports a Spring-native programming model,” he said. “You can now write your MSF4J microservices, Interceptors, ExceptionMappers and configuration as Spring beans and wire them up at runtime.”
MSF4J 2.0 also features support for Swagger, the standard, language-agnostic interface to REST APIs. The Swagger framework for APIs enables both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of a service without access to source code, documentation or through network traffic inspection, Azeez said.
This feature enables developers to add Swagger annotations to their microservices to enrich the Swagger definition of their service, he said.
WSO2 launched its Microservices Framework for Java 1.0 in March to help developers create secure, high-performance microservices in Java that support container-based deployments.
“Software architects and developers are rapidly adopting microservices to ensure continuous agile delivery and flexible deployment of their service-oriented applications across a range of platforms,” Isabelle Mauny, WSO2’s vice president of product management, said in a statement. “With our WSO2 Microservices Framework for Java, they now have an end-to-end architecture for quickly building robust microservices based on one of the software community’s most popular programming languages.”
Azeez said the framework is targeted at environments where high performance and a small footprint are core features. Microservices developed using MSF4J can boot within 400 milliseconds in a Docker container and can easily be added to a Docker image definition. WSO2’s MSF4J uses annotations, such as Java API for RESTful Web Services (JAX-RS) annotations, not only to write but also to monitor microservices, the company said.
In related developer news, Built.io this week introduced a new release of its Flow platform as a service that also features support for Swagger and the RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML). Swagger and RAML are the industry’s two dominant API description standards. The new release of Built.io Flow enables users to create flows connecting any service that supports Swagger or RAML without writing any code.
In addition, the new release features an activity builder, a data mapper, a trigger tester, a flow library importer, API lookup capabilities and new integrations. Built.io also has beefed up its library of out-of-the-box integrations, including popular software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings, such as Pipedrive, HubSpot and Trello, as well as Internet of things-enabled endpoints, such as Amazon Alexa and Tesla Motors’ vehicle APIs.
Announced this week at the Cisco Live conference in Las Vegas, the new release of Built.io Flow brings ease of integration to non-developers. Matthew Baier, chief operating officer at Built.io, said the platform has gained strong traction with enterprise developers, but it also has caught on with users in the “no-code, low code” demographic, he said. Baier referred to these users as “citizen integrators.”
“Across Cisco these last few months, Built.io Flow has become the top integration platform for our cloud collaboration tools—Cisco Spark and Tropo” Jason Goecke, general manager of the Tropo business unit at Cisco, said in a statement. “Built.io Flow allows our sales teams to quickly create a highly tailored proof-of-concept and demonstrate the concrete value Cisco delivers in the context of the customer’s environment. We can integrate our products with the client’s actual systems and we literally do it right in front of their eyes.”
At the Cisco event, Built.io announced new customer wins—including Cisco, CDW, Twilio and VMware. The company also offered a preview of how Built.io Flow will power integrations at the new Sacramento Kings arena, which will be unveiled later this year.