Spring Boot Vs Micronaut: Difference Between Spring and Micronaut
Spring Boot and Micronaut both are the frameworks for building microservices on the JVM. Spring Boot is the most popular and opinionated framework for developing Java enterprise applications. Comparatively, the Micronaut is quickly gaining popularity framework specially designed for building serverless functions or low memory-footprint microservices. In this section of learning the Spring Boot series, we will distinguish the Spring Boot Vs Micronaut on the basis of several parameters such as performance, ease of use, Bootstrapping, etc.
Before diving into the topic; let’s have a brief introduction of both frameworks.
What is Spring Boot
Spring Boot is a Java Framework for developing Java-based enterprise applications. It provides production-ready applications using some extensive features such as auto configurations, starters, etc. We can create fully-fledged Spring applications having one class inside it using Spring Boot. Due to its features, Spring Boot is one of the best technologies to create microservices.
Read more about What is Spring Boot.
What is Micronaut
Micronaut is a JVM-based framework used for developing the lightweight, modular applications easily. It is developed by OCI ( Fonder of Grails). It is the latest framework for designing and developing microservices quickly.
It has some features that are available in some popular frameworks such as Spring. Additionally, it supports some more latest features for developing the microservices.
The Micronaut provides supports for Java, Kotlin, and Groovy languages. Using these languages, it provides several ways for creating a wide range of applications.
Let’s compare both technologies based on different parameters. We will compare both frameworks on the basis of the below parameters:
1) Ease of Installation
In the case of ease of installation, both tools can be easily installed by following some basic instructions.
The Spring Boot and Micronaut both the frameworks provide a CLI ( Command Line Interface) to get started with development. We can easily install the CLI tool and develop the Spring Boot/Micronaut Project and test it.
We can also install and maintain different versions of the SDK of these tools using the SDKMAN.
2) System Requirements
The Spring Boot and Micronaut require almost similar system requirements, which are as following:
- An IDE ( IntelliJ, Eclipse, or STS)
- JDK 1.8 or later
- Gradle or Maven latest versions
We can easily import the code generated through the CLI tool into our IDE:
Spring Tool Suite (STS) — Spring Boot
IntelliJ IDEA — Spring Boot & Micronaut
3) Cloud Services
In the case of cloud services, the Micronaut has won the race. Because it supports the most popular cloud features by default without depending on third party services. Comparatively, the Spring Boot is dependent on the third-party cloud services and dependencies.
Several cloud features are by default the part of the Micronaut. Whereas in Spring Boot, for all these services it depends on the third-party applications or dependencies:
The Micronaut’s tagline is ‘Natively cloud-native app development’, which means by default it integrates the following services:
- Service discovery
- Eureka, Consul, or ZooKeeper service discovery servers
- Kubernetes container
- Client-side load balancing
- Netflix Ribbon ( for load balancing)
- Distributed Configuration
- Distributed Tracing
- Serverless functions
All of the above services are packaged with Micronaut by default but not in Spring Boot. So it is an advantage of using the Micronaut.
4) Serverless Architecture
The Server architecture is where the developers deploy the applications. Both of these frameworks provide serverless architecture. They are completely managed by the cloud environment. The management contains invocation, execution, control, and put down.
Micronaut provides fast startup time than Spring Boot, as, Spring Boot loaded too many dependencies. Additionally, it provides a compile-time approach and low-memory footprint. Whereas, the Spring Boot’s memory usage and startup time slightly higher than Micronaut.
The Micronaut provides dedicated support for implementing and deploying the application to the cloud services such as AWS Lambda and FaaS.
Micronaut provides the serverless function implementation.
5) Language Support
Both Frameworks supports the following three languages:
- Java
- Groovy
- Kotlin
6) Application Properties
When it comes to deal with application properties, Spring Boot provides more ways than Micronaut to deal with it.
The Micronaut is obsessed with Grails and Spring Boot both for integrating the configuration properties from external resources to direct into the IoC container. The Micronaut’s application configuration can be provided by default in either JSON, YAML, Java Properties, or Groovy files. It uses one of the following files to define the application properties:
- application.yml
- application.properties
- application.json
- application.groovy
Micronaut allows us to override properties via system properties or environment variables just like Grails and Spring.
It has a built-in implementations of PropertySourceLoader to load the properties from the specified locations and in sequence. It provides the following properties:
- Command-line arguments
- Properties from SPRING_APPLICATION_JSON
- Properties from MICRONAUT_APPLICATION_JSON
- Java System Properties
- OS environment variables
- Each Environment-specific properties like application-{environment}.{extension} (could be .properties, .json, .yml or .groovy)
- Application-specific properties from the application.{extension} (could be.properties, .json, .yml or .groovy)
- Special properties ( Random Values )
Spring Boot supports all above property locations, Additionally, it also supports other property locations, such as:
- Spring Boot devtools global settings properties
- @TestPropertySource annotations on your tests.
- @SpringBootTest#properties annotation attribute on your tests.
- ServletConfig init parameters.
- ServletContext init parameters.
- JNDI attributes from java:comp/env.
- @PropertySource annotations on your @Configuration classes.
- Default properties (specified by setting SpringApplication.setDefaultProperties)
7) Messaging Tools
Both Spring Boot and Micronaut supports popular messaging systems. But, Spring Boot has more options.
Spring Boot supports the integration of the following external Messaging tools:
- RabbitMQ
- Apache Kafka
- ActiveMQ
- Artemis
Micronaut supports the following popular messaging tools:
- RabbitMQ
- Apache Kafka
- It also has embedded support for the Apache Kafka
8) Security
We can not decide which one is better in the security mechanism. Both frameworks have different security mechanisms and each one has got its own advantages.
By default, Spring Boot supports the following security mechanisms:
- MVC Security
- WebFlux Security
- OAuth2
- Actuator Security
By default, Micronaut supports the following security mechanisms:
- Authentication Providers
- Security Rules
- IP Pattern Rule
- Secured Annotation
- Intercept URL Map
- Built-In Endpoints Security
- Authentication Strategies
- Basic Auth
- Session Authentication
- JSON Web Token
- Built-In Security Controllers
- Retrieve the Authenticated User
- Security Events
9) Logging
Both Spring Boot and Micronaut usage the following logging mechanism:
- Log4j
- Logback
10) Caching
Spring Boot supports more caching providers than Micronaut.
Spring Boot supports the following caching providers:
- Redis
- Couchbase
- Generic
- JCache (JSR-107)
- EhCache 2.x
- Hazelcast
- Infinispan
- Caffeine
Comparatively, the Micronaut supports the following caching providers:
- Caffeine — by default Micronaut supports it.
- Redis
11) Management
Spring Boot provides more monitoring options to the application than Micronaut. As we have discussed the Micronaut is inspired by the Grails, Spring Boot. So, the Micronauts management dependency adds support to monitor your applications via endpoints, the special URIs that return details about the state of your application and health.
- Creating Endpoints
- Built-In Endpoints
Apart from managing the applications from endpoints, it also supports the following ways:
- Monitoring & Management over HTTP
- Customizing the Management Endpoints paths
- Customizing the Management Server Port
- Configuring Management-specific SSL
- Customizing the Management Server Address
- Disabling HTTP Endpoints
- Monitoring & Management over JMS
Conclusion
As we have discussed a comparative overview of both Spring Boot vs Micronaut with their different features. Adding a final note to this discussion, we would like to say the Spring Boot is a stable and leading framework for developing the microservices over the years. But, Micronaut is a new framework having some extensive and innovative features. It is giving a tough competition to Spring Boot in case of features and ease of use. Hope it will get more popular in the coming years.
Here we have discussed Spring Boot Vs Micronaut.
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