Quarkus and Kubernetes: The Fellowship of Cloud-Native Java

Ana Maria, what is the focus of your work these days?

These days, I am spending my time creating tutorials or workshops that use different Red Hat and open source technologies. I recently contributed to the Quarkus, Knative, and Tekton tutorials that support the DevNation Deep Dives with examples. I enjoy creating these kinds of tutorials, workshops, deep dives, and of course, sharing them with the communities in online presentations. Still, but hopefully, we will present them live and face to face. Everybody is looking forward to that. And yes, I am still having a lot of fun developing with Java8, 11, and 17 because Java it's an essential part of my day-to-day work. I like to combine upgrading and building cloud-native applications with different tools to create a seamless experience when working with Kubernetes, Istio, or Knative.

And what is the motivation for your presentation?

When I adopt any technology, I evaluate how it relates to requirements, how easy it is for me to learn it, and the experience others had. I've observed a lot of professionals asking for proven ways when building cloud-native applications, questioning certain aspects of implementing those, so I've been looking into some public testimonials about Quarkus use cases. I quoted some of those in my presentation and elaborated more on the features and practices mentioned as helpful. 

To support developers in their cloud-native implementations, Quarkus version 2.* brought significant changes for an even more delightful local development experience and an enhanced set of extensions and APIs.  For example, besides the famous live load and the unified configuration already available, managing project setup became easier via Quarkus CLI and Quarkus Terminal. Dev Services promote a zero-config local database setup for a wide range of databases to save development time with local setup. Moreover, continuous testing enablement gets you instant feedback from the tests that cover the pieces of code you've modified. Moving towards production has always been a sensitive subject, so I included some tips on separating concerns of different application run modes. My talk aims to connect the dots between previous Cloud-Native experiences, terminology, and Quarkus features, all of which are shared through code examples.

How would you describe the persona and level of the target audience?

I would recommend this talk to professionals tempted to upgrade to a newer Java version, seeking to improve their working methods and regularly evaluating their options in terms of frameworks and tools. The features and practices mentioned earlier are meant to speed up the individual work and inspire a cohesive development approach at the team level. I am looking forward to sharing my talk with an audience seeking to improve individually and collectively.

And what would you like that audience to walk away with from your presentation?

Through the use cases and examples shared, I desire to clarify the impact of work done at the application level towards infrastructure and how you can safely influence that through configurations and testing. I hope to encourage the attendees to discover more about native Java applications' interactions with the different container and Kubernetes aspects. I would like them to walk away inspired by the ideas shared, practices, and the combination of technologies I am using in my talk, all from the comfortable Java context.