Comparing Quarkus vs Spring Boot

As you know, the Java ecosystem is a pretty diverse place, and there are many ways to approach the problems we face.

The Java ecosystem has been changing fast. Some of the most significant changes have come from the rise of microservices, containers, and cloud computing. We’ve seen many new frameworks and tooling emerge to support these changes.

For example, Spring Boot has become a De Facto standard for Java development. Meanwhile, other frameworks like Quarkus have emerged to fill in the gaps and provide additional functionality.

If you’re looking for a battle of the Java frameworks, you can’t go wrong with Quarkus vs. Spring Boot. Both frameworks have pros and cons, but which one is suitable for your project?

In this blog post, we’ll pit Quarkus and Spring Boot against each other to see which one comes out on top. Who will win in this fight? Read on to find out!

What is Spring Boot?

Spring Boot is an open-source, popular, lightweight, and developer-friendly framework. It is designed to make it easy to write applications in Java that can be deployed on the cloud or run on your desktop.

Getting started with Java is simpler with Spring Boot, and it is a good fit for microservices.

It is an out-of-the-box web application framework that let you focus on the code rather than the configuration. With Spring Boot, you can start up your applications quickly and easily.

Spring Boot provides a set of Spring annotations that can be used to make the code more declarative. It’s been around for a while and is a pretty well-established framework, and is licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Features

1. Bean Validation

Spring Boot provides the ability to validate your beans at the class level, and you can also validate individual properties in beans. The validation is done using annotations, so you don’t need to write any custom validation code.

2. Data Access

Spring Boot provides a straightforward way to access data. You can use the JdbcTemplate, JpaTemplate, and other template-based data access APIs to help you with database-related tasks.

3. MVC

It supports the MVC pattern, and it provides several MVC-specific features. This can help you to create web applications quickly and easily. For example, you can use Spring MVC to implement REST APIs, and Spring WebFlux can be used to create web applications built using the Reactive Streams pattern.

4. Web

Spring Boot provides the ability to configure a number of web-related features, such as static resources, static file serving, and web-based authentication.

5. Spring Cloud

It provides the ability to create applications that can be deployed on the cloud. You can create REST APIs that can be used to interact with other services. You can also create Spring-powered microservices, which can be used to interact with each other and provide a decentralized architecture.

Pros

• Simplifies the dependencies in your pom.xml file
• It provides an embedded tomcat server which makes it easy to use
• Spring boot has a lot of starters which makes it easy to get started with popular technologies like hibernate and spring data
• It provides a lot of features out of the box like monitoring, logging, security, etc
• It follows the “convention over configuration” principle, which makes it easy to get started with

Cons

• Spring boot is a bit heavyweight, and it can be slow to start up
• It doesn’t work well with minimal applications
• Developers have to put in extra effort to create truly “fat jars.”
• Spring boot applications are not always easy to containerize

What is Quarkus?

Quarkus is a Kubernetes-native Java stack tailored for GraalVM & OpenJDK HotSpot, crafted from the best-of-breed Java libraries and standards.

Quarkus combines the reactive programming model with microservices to make writing Java applications fun again.

With Quarkus, you can write Java applications that are:

• Cloud-native and container-ready
• Less resource-intensive
• Startup faster
• Easier to write and maintain

If you’re looking for a Kubernetes-native Java stack that can help you write Java applications quickly and easily, Quarkus is the right choice for you.

Features

1. Container-native

Quarkus is a container-native framework. This means that it is designed to run in a Kubernetes environment. You can create a Quarkus application, deploy it to Kubernetes, and use it to interact with other Kubernetes-based applications.

2. Concurrency

Quarkus is designed to support microservices. It’s based on a new Java programming model built around concurrency and immutability. The new programming model helps to improve performance and reliability. As a result, it provides several concurrency-related features, such as:

• Transactional resources
• Read-write lock
• Event-driven execution
• Caching
• RabbitMQ
• Event-based routing

3. Unifies imperative and reactive programming

Quarkus provides the ability to use both imperative and reactive programming. This helps to improve the quality of your code. For example, you can use imperative programming to create an application that can interact with the outside world.

4. Full-Stack Application

It is a full-stack application that can be used to create a distributed system. It’s based on the Reactive Streams model, and it uses the JVM as a message bus. As a result, it can be used to create distributed systems built using the Reactive Streams model.

5. Performance

Quarkus is designed to be fast and reliable. It can help you create applications that can run in a containerized environment. As a result, it provides many performance-related features, such as:

• Zero-copy bytecode generation:
• Hot reload
• Static linking
• Inline caching
• Native execution
• Inter-process communication

Pros

• Quarkus is much lighter weight than Spring Boot, making it ideal for microservices
• Its startup time is swift, making it ideal for cloud deployments
• Quarkus provides a native Java stack with support for GraalVM and HotSpot, making it ideal for performance-intensive applications
• Quarkus is fully open source and has a very active community

Cons

• Quarkus is still a relatively new framework and, as such, lacks some features and maturity of Spring Boot
• It can be more challenging to learn than Spring Boot
• Quarkus applications can be more difficult to containerize than Spring Boot applications.

Quarkus vs. Spring – Final Word

In conclusion, both Spring Boot and Quarkus are excellent choices for building microservices.

However, Quarkus has some advantages over Spring Boot in terms of speed and resource usage.

If you’re looking for a fast and lightweight framework, Quarkus is a great choice. But, if you want a more feature-rich framework, Spring Boot is a better choice.