This is an ongoing series of videos and blog posts exploring development and deployment of Spring applications with VMware Tanzu Application Platform. Content will be added and updated over time as the series production progresses.

Spring is a vast framework encompassing a broad number of architectural patterns and implementations with a goal of moving common programming and deployment issues away from a developer’s purview so that they can spend more time focusing on their core business logic. The framework and its numerous components are so large that at one time the page count for all Spring documentation packaged together into a single PDF would span a daunting 9,000+ pages. So where is a developer to begin and how do various parts of Spring work seamlessly together to give a developer optimal architectural value?

Many sections of the Spring documentation and accompanying samples present constructs in isolation, and those that cross conceptual boundaries do little to explain how the additional components bring value to the focal idea. This is where reference architectures and applications can become heroes in fusing together desperate Spring components resulting in outcomes whose value as a single integrated unit are greater than the sum of its parts.

Application architecture and development is just the beginning of the story. Promoting source code from the IDE ultimately to production is an art form amongst itself consisting of multidisciplinary concerns such as

• Developer integration with the targeted runtime platform
• Delivery and deployment pipelines
• Application observability
• Cost optimization 
• Security policy, procedure, and governance

VMware Tanzu is a contemporary application platform providing consistent and streamlined paths to production that include optimized developer experiences, automated operations across multiple roles, and centralized security policy and governance. The capabilities of Tanzu enhance the Spring experience and make it an ideal platform for developing and running your Spring applications.

The journey

To reveal the potential that awaits, we present the Spring on Tanzu video series to guide you through two complementary areas of focus:

• An introduction to Spring application architecture and key framework components that are commonly used in modern cloud applications and an understanding of how they fit together in the general architectural picture. This is facilitated through the use of a multi-service reference application.
• Exploring the capabilities of VMware Tanzu as a development and deployment platform for Spring applications. This will particularly focus on VMware Tanzu Application Platform.

Series overview

An introduction that examines the problem set and lays out the structure of the series.

Part 1: Spring application architecture

Reference application demo

A demonstration of the Where For Dinner reference application used throughout the series, as well as a description of the functional use case it solves.

Microservices and Spring Boot

An overview of the microservices that comprise the Where For Dinner reference application and how Spring Boot enables rapid development of microservices including an introduction to Spring Boot autoconfiguration.

Application configuration

An exploration of how Spring abstracts applications from configuration data sources and how Spring application components are discovered, configured, and composed.

Reactive data

A look at how Spring Data abstracts applications from the details of data source connections, data mapping, and data operations, and how these features are integrated into a reactive application.

Reactive Web APIs

Learn how Spring Web and WebFlux facilitate the rapid creation of RESTful servers and clients and how these features are integrated into a reactive stack.

Coming soon

• Asynchronous messaging
• Gateways and routing
• Functions and cloud events
• Native images

Part 2: Tanzu Application Platform

An overview of VMware Tanzu for developers

A high-level overview of the value proposition of VMware Tanzu from a developer’s perspective.

Introduction to Tanzu Developer Portal

An exploration of the VMware Tanzu Developer Portal along with an introduction into its productivity plug-ins that complement a Spring developer’s path to production.

VMware Tanzu Application Accelerator

An overview of the application accelerator value proposition including demonstrations of rapidly generating a new project from an accelerator template and how to create and publish your own custom accelerators.

Coming soon

• Inner-loop development
• Supply chains
• Service binding
• Scale to zero
• API discovery
• Multi-cloud
• Observability