Leading the future of Java with the Red Hat build of Quarkus 1.7

The latest supported version of the Red Hat build of Quarkus continues to drive the future of Java development for Kubernetes-native and serverless applications. This article introduces the technologies making it easier than ever to create fast, lightweight Java applications for container-based and serverless environments using the Red Hat build of Quarkus 1.7.

Native code compilation

Developers using the Red Hat build of Quarkus can now choose between deploying natively compiled code or JVM-based code depending on an application's needs. Natively compiled Quarkus applications are extremely fast and memory-efficient, making Quarkus a great choice for serverless and high-density cloud deployments. Quarkus 1.7's support for native executables is provided by Mandrel, a downstream distribution of GraalVM based on OpenJDK 11.

Note: See this summary of the recently published Quarkus IDC Lab Validation Report for more about how Quarkus performs compared to traditional Java frameworks.

Additional features and capabilities

The Red Hat build of Quarkus 1.7 includes these additional features and capabilities:

• Red Hat OpenShift 4.5 certification for supported configurations.
• Support for Red Hat OpenShift Serverless (Knative Serving).
• Integration with Red Hat Data Grid 8 (Infinispan client) and Red Hat's single sign-on technology (Keycloak).
• Spring compatibility enhancements for cache, config, and scheduled.
• The gRPC extension for remote procedure calls.
• Support for the Mutiny reactive framework.

The gRPC extension and remote development

One of the founding principles of Quarkus is to bring Java developers joy. Quarkus delivers on this promise by providing developers with tools and capabilities such as live coding, unified configuration, IDE plug-ins, and more. The Red Hat build of Quarkus also supports a vast ecosystem of extensions for easily configuring, integrating, and compiling other frameworks and technologies. One such technology is the gRPC extension, which lets developers expose and consume remote procedure calls with Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption and authentication.

Quarkus also provides a remote development mode that lets developers run Quarkus in container environments such as OpenShift. Changes to local files are immediately visible when in remote development mode.

OpenShift and serverless deployments

Its small memory footprint and fast boot times make Quarkus an ideal runtime for serverless applications. The Red Hat build of Quarkus is optimized for use with containers and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. As a result, developers can easily deploy Kubernetes-native and serverless applications without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. The Quarkus OpenShift extension lets you use Apache Maven in a single build command or the Source-to-Image (S2I) method to deploy Quarkus applications and Kubernetes resources on OpenShift. The Quarkus OpenShift extension also supports deploying Quarkus applications to OpenShift with Knative Serving installed. Knative Serving scales application services up and down depending on the load size.

Note: See the Red Hat Build of Quarkus 1.7 documentation for more about deploying Quarkus applications on OpenShift and as OpenShift Serverless services.

More tools for developers

In addition to the optimizations and integrations with OpenShift, the Red Hat build of Quarkus is also tightly integrated with Red Hat Data Grid 8 and Red Hat's single sign-on technology.

Red Hat Data Grid 8 is an in-memory, distributed, NoSQL datastore solution based on Infinispan. Using the Quarkus Infinispan extension, developers can connect to a Data Grid server running outside of application processes and create native executables. See Securely connect Quarkus and Red Hat Data Grid on Red Hat OpenShift for more about this technology.

Red Hat's single sign-on technology provides support with securing web applications. The Keycloak extension provides the architecture, authentication and authorization mechanisms, and other tools for creating production-quality security for your applications. See the DevNation Tech Talk, Easily secure your cloud-native microservices with Keycloak to learn more about securing Quarkus microservices with single sign-on technology from Red Hat.

What’s next for Quarkus?

The Quarkus community is rapidly innovating and releasing updates. We will continue to mirror this innovation to support Java developers creating cloud-native applications with Quarkus. Future releases of the Red Hat build of Quarkus will add new features and capabilities to improve developer productivity. We will also continue to find ways to support developers in creating serverless applications beyond OpenShift.

Get started with the Red Hat build of Quarkus 1.7

For developers interested in getting started, the Quarkus initializer is a powerful way to bootstrap your Quarkus application and discover its extensions ecosystem.