What Alibaba Architects Learned at SpringOne 2016: From ReactiveX to Serverless

SpringOne is the world’s most authoritative Spring conference, held from August 1‑4 in Las Vegas, USA. Several Alibaba architects attended and share their impressions.

Hot Topics – Technical Frameworks

ReactiveX : a reactive programming model for asynchronous and event‑driven programs, combining observer, iterator and functional programming. Documentation includes examples that can be hard to grasp; see http://reactivex.io/intro.html and its Chinese translation https://mcxiaoke.gitbooks.io/rxdocs/content/Intro.html.

Ratpack : a lightweight high‑performance HTTP framework built on Netty and Java 8. In the era of microservices, HTTP RESTful communication complements traditional RPC, offering faster development and higher throughput compared with the Servlet API.

Jigsaw in JDK 9 : Java 9’s module system isolates modules and manages dependencies via imports and exports, similar to Pandora’s principle. Although Java 9 had not been released at the time, anticipation was high.

Spring 5 :

Full support for Java 8 and Java 9.

Supports Java EE 7, Tomcat 8.5+, Jetty 9.3+, WildFly 10+.

Includes reactive programming support.

Spring Boot 1.4 :

Deprecated classes and methods from 1.3 were removed, increasing upgrade cost.

Improved failure messages, customizable banner images.

Live demo showed hot‑deployment: changes to pom, properties, or Java code take effect instantly.

Zipkin : an open‑source distributed tracing system from Twitter, similar to EagleEye, used by many companies for trace analysis.

XRebel : ZeroTurnaround’s performance analysis tool that works via a Java agent without instrumentation, useful for single‑node analysis but limited for distributed architectures.

PaaS – Platform as a Service

SpringOne Platform highlighted Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), offering a complete “cloud operating system” from IaaS to containers to microservices. Spring, as part of Pivotal, collaborates closely with PCF.

Other influential PaaS products mentioned include Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Microsoft’s presence indicated its growing embrace of open source.

Foreign PaaS ecosystems tend to have richer API‑management solutions (e.g., Apigee), simplifying cross‑platform integration, whereas Chinese cloud providers often lack open interoperability, increasing user effort and cost.

Serverless – “No‑Server” Architecture

Although no dedicated session covered it, an open discussion touched on serverless, whose goal is to abstract away servers and infrastructure so developers can focus on code.

IaaS virtualizes physical machines; PaaS adds middleware services; SaaS and BaaS extend to full backend capabilities. Serverless lets developers rent ready‑made services (e.g., messaging, caching, storage) without managing scalability or stability.

A notable example is AWS Lambda, a Function‑as‑a‑Service that runs functions on demand with per‑invocation billing.

Cloud Native

Cloud‑native is an architectural mindset demanding rapid release, high availability, and elastic scaling, leveraging continuous delivery, DevOps, and microservices to fully exploit cloud elasticity.

Agile & DevOps

Multiple sessions emphasized Agile practices—cross‑functional teams, pair programming, code reviews, and product‑oriented organization—to accelerate development. DevOps bridges development and operations, aligning both toward fast yet stable delivery through shared goals, standards, and tooling.

Microservices

Microservices underpin PaaS, BaaS, cloud‑native, and DevOps. Spring Boot dramatically improves development and deployment efficiency, yet integrating it with existing technology stacks remains a challenge.

Other Impressions

SpringOne, organized by Pivotal, heavily promoted Cloud Foundry (PCF) and related customer cases. While PCF adoption in China appears limited, companies like Huawei and Alibaba participated, along with a representative from China Merchants Bank.

Spring Boot core developer Josh Long with Alibaba architects