JAVA in Non-Enterprise Custom Software Development,
Or How Can One Benefit from Using Java to Develop Smaller Custom Apps?
As a computer programming technology, Java is generally regarded to be related to either something massive-scaled (and usually found in the enterprise space), or legacy and in need of maintenance.
While the benefits of Java in the development of major custom applications are universally known, the advantages of using the technology to develop smaller-scaled apps have largely been overlooked.
Startups and middle-sized businesses tend to opt for some other technologies, even though Java can provide similar capabilities in parallel with what can often be better quality and better security.
Is Java software development worth considering as an option if the app you have in mind is not an ERP whopper, or a giant Telco system?
We do believe that it is. And even though the vast bulk of our Java application development experience is related to enterprise projects, as a company that has been extensively involved in Java development outsourcing, we have developed smaller Java apps too. This has made us believe Java is a terrific tool for the development of non-enterprise-grade business software.
Let's take a closer look.
Enhanced Budget and Software Quality Control
Oftentimes, the development of a small or mid-size app poses no fewer challenges than that of a major enterprise system. The two things that are usually hard to keep in check are the project budget and software quality. Does Java have anything special to offer in this regard?
In fact, it does.
Java has a number of readily available means that allow you to efficiently control the above two aspects of your software development effort throughout its duration, including your app's testing and deployment. For example, the more popular Behavior testing tools, provided by Java and capable of improving the quality of your software product, include Cucumber and JBehave. A great Java-provided Web testing tool you can use too is Selenium. Notably, these tools seamlessly integrate and work well together.
Thus, in essence, you are afforded the ability to control your software quality and development spend in an automatic mode, from the point you kick off the development, till when you implement Continuous Integration and Delivery for your Java solution.
Better Software Quality and Improved User Experience
With the introduction of Behavior-driven development and testing, software testing & QA have been taken to an entire new level. Now, you can test not only parts of your system, but also all the functionality, related to entire workflows and business processes. This can improve dramatically the user experience, provided by your application.
With Java, you can benefit from the Behavior-driven approach regardless of the type of the application that you want to develop, be it a desk-top app, a Web application, or a REST service.
Our Java developers have done quite a bit of Behavior-driven Java app development. From our experience, going for Java can, in many instances, really make things less costly for you. Talking of examples, implementing new APIs for a Car Rentals Java Web application took us just 3-4 days, while otherwise we would have been sure to spend twice that long.
Great Portability: Allow for Future Business Opportunities from the Outset
Often, in the course of time, business ideas find embodiments other than those, envisaged by their creators.
While today you may need a business app that is geared toward one purpose, tomorrow you may discover a new market, or market niche that will require a different technology approach. Java boasts excellent portability. It can be run on a range of platforms and in various environments. This means that if tomorrow you need your business application to interface with another app to support your business processes, Java will be a great deal more likely to fulfill your needs than most other programming technologies. If you need customize or to re-use and further expand the User Management functionality of your Java Web application, this will also be easier to do with Java than with most other technologies.
Better Testing Quality and Customer Satisfaction
Although developing GUI in Java seems to be very popular no longer, the ability of this technology to support creating highly efficient data retrieval Web services is increasingly in demand.
Employing the means, provided by Java for this purpose, allows one to reduce the influence of the human factor during software testing and deployment. You can write an automatic testing scenario just once and then rest assured it will be executed as expected. The same precision and reliability are ensured when it comes to deployment. You may not worry about a failed or missed back-up, or any other human error, thwarting your deployment procedure and resulting in a missed deadline.
Better Ability to Interact with a Large Number of Concurrent Users
If your business application is intended to interact with a large number of concurrent users (which is, usually, the case when it deals with e Commerce apps, Inventory apps, some types of financial applications and some other solutions), it must be capable of performing well and fast enough even under what can be considered a significant load.
With a large number of concurrent users, ensuring your app's fast performance and fail-safety can be quite challenging. This may be especially difficult to do if your application is supposed to retrieve data from various databases in response to user queries (for instance, the way it happens with trading or investment applications, continually obtaining updated data from brokers and other sources).
What does this have to do with Java?
Unlike most other popular programming technologies, Java allows you to create extremely powerful back-end functionality and run the more resource-consuming operations (data retrieval, calculations and more) on the back-end. The latter, in turn, ensures the system's fast responsiveness on the front-end.
Better Security
Whether it deals with the need to reliably safeguard a software system against malware and hacking attacks, or with the need to provide data in response to a user query without granting the user access to the system, Java seems to be second-to-none.
In addition, with Java, you can easily implement multi-layer access control and to further enhance the level of security your application provides.
Disclaimer: The present article reflects solely the subjective viewpoint of the SYTOSS Development Team on the topics, covered herein and does not represent an advice to buy or not to buy, or use or not to use any software product or technology.
