Java Magazine, Jan/Feb 2017

ORACLE COM JAVAMAGAZINE JANUARY FEBRUARY 2017 52 cloud There has been tremendous interest in application containers during the past couple of years Application containerization comes with the promise of build once run anywhere in an isolated environment that consumes significantly fewer resources than a virtual machine Given the widespread interest and growing adoption many vendors are looking at ofering container solutions Oracle Application Container Cloud Service leverages Docker and provides a service that can run your Java PHP and Node js applications In this article I look at the Java and Java EE capabilities of Oracle Application Container Cloud Service To follow along youll need basic knowledge about Maven Java EE and containerization Containers for Java EE Before diving into Oracle Application Container Cloud Service lets quickly go over some things to consider if youre looking to switch to containers from established Java EE deployment servers First its important to consider the ease of use of Java EE today and the smart self contained and out of the box nature of modern Java EE tools and servers Containerized applications are lightweight because they ship with only what they need and nothing else This means that you need to know exactly which resources dependencies and versions to include which can take some getting used to especially for Java EE developers accustomed to using application servers that provide everything an application might require With most current Java EE applications you provide your application code and the server pretty much provides and figures out most other things using a mix of conventions and configuration in your application Containerized applications by their very nature seem suited to public cloud deployments However even for traditional Java EE deployments there are many platform as aservice PaaS cloud solutions that do a great job of running your Java EE in the cloud In most cases you dont need to worry about the underlying hardware resources or servers I discussed these deployments in previous articles in Java Magazine most recently Getting Onboard Oracle Java Cloud Service where I showed how to use Oracle Java Cloud Service for Java EE applications Theres also a lot of expertise and tooling in place for the established Java EE server based approach The container market is still in a state of flux Once youre sure that containers are the way to go for your application you can decide on the kind of container solution to adopt Lets take a closer look at Oracles solution About Oracle Application Container Cloud Service Oracle Application Container Cloud Service is a simple solution that runs your application in its own Docker container in the Oracle Cloud It currently supports Java and JVM languages PHP and Node js It promises fast easy to use self service provisioning of your applications in isolated container environments in the Oracle Cloud The service provides integration with other cloud services offered by the company including Oracle Database HARSHAD OAK Java in Containers in the Cloud Deploy Java apps in Docker containers using Oracle Application Container Cloud Service