Spring Boot: Up and Running

Chapter 12. Going Deeper with Reactive

As previously discussed, reactive programming gives developers a way to make better use of resources in distributed systems, even extending powerful scaling mechanisms across application boundaries and into the communication channels. For developers with experience exclusively with mainstream Java development practices—often called imperative Java due to its explicit and sequential logic versus the more declarative approach generally used in reactive programming, although this label, like most, is imperfect—these reactive capabilities may bear some undesired costs. In addition to the expected learning curve, which Spring helps flatten considerably due to parallel and complementary WebMVC and WebFlux implementations, there are also relative limitations in tooling, its maturity, and established practices for essential activities like testing, troubleshooting, and debugging.

While it is true that reactive Java development is in its infancy relative to its imperative cousin, the fact that they are family has allowed a much faster development and maturation of useful tooling and processes. As mentioned, Spring builds similarly on established imperative expertise within its development and community to condense decades of evolution into production-ready components available now.

This chapter introduces and explains the current state of the art in testing and diagnosing/debugging issues you might encounter as you begin to deploy reactive Spring ...