Futures and Rx Observables: powerful abstractions for consuming web services asynchronously

Track: Web
Skill Level: Intermediate
Room: Room 103
Time Slot: Tue 2/25, 10:30 AM
Tags: web , architecture , rxjava , javascript
Presentation Link
Abstract

A modular, polyglot architecture has many advantages but it also adds complexity since each incoming request typically fans out to multiple distributed services. For example, in an online store application the information on a product details page - description, price, recommendations, etc - comes from numerous services. To minimize response time and improve scalability, these services must be invoked concurrently. However, traditional concurrency mechanisms are low-level, painful to use and error-prone.

In this talk you will learn about some powerful yet easy to use abstractions for consuming web services asynchronously. We will compare the various implementations of futures that are available on the JVM. You will learn how to access web services using reactive observables (RxJava), which are asynchronous data streams. We will describe how these mechanisms let you write asynchronous code in a very straightforward, declarative fashion.

Chris Richardson

Chris Richardson is a developer and architect. He is the author of POJOs in Action, which describes how to build enterprise Java applications with frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate. Chris was also the founder of the original CloudFoundry.com, an early Java PaaS for Amazon EC2. Today, he is a recognized thought leader in microservices. Chris is the creator of http://microservices.io, a website describing how to develop and deploy microservices. He provides microservices consulting and training and is working on his third startup http://eventuate.io, an application platform for developing microservices.