Serverless computing, also referred to as simply Serverless, is a famed topic of the software architecture world. The biggest cloud-providing platforms like Amazon, Google and Microsoft are continuing to invest heavily and research on this type of architecture. Serverless is a cloud computing code execution model where a certain cloud provider takes over responsibility for servers running along with computing resources management. To put it in a simple view, there are no physical or virtual servers to manage, because they are automatically deployed in the cloud by the third-party vendors. Some of the famous serverless providers are AWS Lambda, GCP Functions and Azure Functions.

The main difference between the traditional and serverless architecture can be schematically seen in diagram 1.

Components of the serverless application are:

Functions

Functions are what imply business and application logic. They execute code for certain actions. There can be multiple functions working as a composite function. Sometimes they may be triggered or self-initiated when a condition is met. This process is hidden from the user. The user creates a program code, specifies needed dependencies and uploads it. The provider then provides the computing environment.

Backends

This unit allows the development to shift backend regular functions from data storage to the cloud, managing latency of the architecture and dependencies deepening. It also aids with functionalities like Simple Notification Service (SNS), Simple Queue Service (SQS), kinesis for streaming data, data warehouse queries, batch data cloud dataflow and event grids.  

Here is how a serverless setup looks like.

When we talk about Serverless, it is primarily defined by two different but overlapping areas: “Backend as a Service” (BaaS) and “Function as a Service” (FaaS). BaaS and FaaS are related in their operational attributes and are frequently used together. Let’s find out what each of these scopes encompasses.

BaaS

This term is used to describe applications that significantly or fully incorporate third-party, cloud hosted applications and services to manage server-side logic and state. These are typically rich client applications like single page web apps or mobile apps that use the vast ecosystem of cloud accessible databases (e.g., Firebase), authentication services (AWS Cognito) and so on.

FaaS

This term is used to describe applications where server-side logic is written by developer but unlike mainstream architectures, its run-in stateless computer containers are event-triggered, ephemeral and managed by a third party. Containers specify OS and software configurations. Regarding uptime, the container keeps working until the current job is executed and destroyed. It can host any microservice and app and there are no timeout restrictions.

Faas, replaces the click-processing physical server with something that does not need a provisional server nor a related app. The only code that needs to change when moving to FaaS is the main method, also called startup code. Handlers which manage message listener interfaces are also changed in the method signature.

Deployment is very different from traditional systems. The code is uploaded to the FaaS provider and then the provider instantiates VM’s and manager process. Horizontal scaling is completely automatic, elastic and managed by the provider. If the system needs to process a hundred requests in parallel, computer containers come into play. They execute the functions and are created and destroyed purely driven by runtime need. Functions in FaaS are typically triggered by event types defined by the provider. Such event types include S3 (file/object) updates and Kinesis. They may also be triggered as a response to inbound HTTP requests via API gateway. However, this is an uncommon use of configuration from within the same cloud environment.

When working in an instance-bound state or a machine state, there may be some restrictions posing to FaaS. Like data that is stored in variables or local disk. Such storage is available but there is no guarantee that such a state persists across multiple invocations and more strongly there should be no assumption made that state from one invocation of a function will be available to another invocation of the same function. This is the reason why FaaS are often described as stateless. But this may not a correct techical assessment. Rather it is appropriate to say that any state of a FaaS function that is required to be persistent needs to be externalized outside of the FaaS function instance. Any function will typically make use of a database, a cross app cache like Redis or a network file/object store to store state across requests or to provide further input necessary to handle a request.  

New-retail business framework (NBF) is an open framework developed by the supply chain infrastructure technology team for new retail services. A serverless system like FaaS helps NBF achieve industry standard practices, load balancing and long-term sustainability. Diagram 3 shows how NBF works in conjunction with FaaS.

Event Sources Function is an event driven set. Function Instances provide functions or microservices. The FaaS Controller manages function control services such as API Gateway or Backend for Front (BFF). Platform Service Functions relay on platform services such as privilege management API’s and OSS. Cloud Service Engine (CSE) provides dynamic scaling capabilities which rapidly adapt to different resources needs during on and off-peak hours. CSE optimizes container cold, hot start performance and serverless O&M tools such as logging, monitoring and link tracking. NBF containers use Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGI) architecture and provide complete bundle lifecycle management, including load, start, unmount and delete as well as isolation and communication. The whole platform capabilities result in services release which allows for quick release of a function or to bundle as a service, service routing which includes polymorphism, degradation and moke routing, service management with service vision control and service start/stop and lastly the service O&M for serverless services, hybrid deployment, phased release, disaster recovery.

Lastly the important concept to grasp is bundle communication. Bundles are able to utilize container capabilities such as Spring context hosting and AOP by using the import mechanism provided by containers. For example:

        
       
org.springframework       
org.apache.commons.logging        
org.aopalliance       
org.aspectj    

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The NBF containers create an independent sandbox for each bundle which ensures code level bundle isolation from time of loading thus preventing class and resource conflicts among bundles. They manage bundle context globally and provide plug-in hosting. This sums up how FaaS works and conjoins.

When a web page takes longer than three seconds to load, 40% of visitors leave, increasing the bounce rate.  

Similarly, a slow mobile app would also have poor performance and irritate consumers. After a few tries, the customer will remove your application and download a more user-friendly one.

The ease of use and user-friendliness of your specific digital solution has a direct impact on the performance of the app. If compromised, it degrades the user experience and lessens the likelihood that users will engage frequently or stay connected to the app or website over time.

On the other hand, developing a web or mobile app with front-end performance in mind increases the chance that your product will succeed. As a result, your priority should be to create an app or website that loads quickly, is SEO-friendly, performs well, and is well-designed.

Here are a few secrets that can help you build up your performance-oriented front-end development.

Optimize Images & Use WebP 

Images are a crucial component of web pages. Considering they increase user engagement, 93.7% of websites on the internet employ at least one image file format.

The drawback of using images is that, unless they are optimized, they have a negative impact on the front-end loading time. However, there are various approaches to optimizing images:

Use AVIF or WebP

Compared to previous formats like JPEG and PNG, using modern image formats like WebP and AVIF shows better performance. When compared to JPEG and PNG, WebP is between 25% and 35% smaller. AVIF is 20% and 50% smaller than WebP and JPEG, respectively.

The browser support is the drawback, though. WebP acquired browser support only recently, so older versions may not support it. In contrast, Chrome and Opera are the only browsers that support AVIF. As a result, you must utilize the <picture> element in native HTML with fallback support.

Serve images of the right dimensions.

Using responsive images is another approach to speed up a website’s performance and cut down on image delivery time. Mobile and tablet devices account for more than 50% of all traffic. The frontend loading time could be further reduced by scaling the image to popular device dimensions and serving it using a srcset.

There are numerous other methods you can use to speed up the frontend loading time through image optimization in addition to picking the right format and dimensions. Additional recommended best practices are:

• Use of progressive JPEGs.
• Use of HTTP/2 instead of HTTP/1.1.
• Use of image sets.
• Image Compression
• Serve smaller images to users on slow connections.

Compress Files & Use CDNs 

Building a lightweight front end for your web or mobile solution is made much easier with the use of content delivery networks, or CDNs. These web directories have a successful global network. Your app will load more quickly if you use files hosted on CDNs since you can use the cached versions of the files from the closest servers. It enables you to quickly serve more users while preventing bottlenecks.

Compressing the files to be used comes next after using common files from CDNs. Every file, including documents, images (JPEG, PNG), videos, audio clips, and presentations, can be compressed to enhance the functionality of your application. There are many compression tools available on the market that might be deployed for this.

Once you’ve completed these two steps, your website or application will be much more responsive to consumer inquiries.

Bundle & Minify Assets 

Two different performance improvements you may use in a web app are bundling and minification. By minimizing the amount of the requested static assets and decreasing the number of server requests, bundling and minification combined enhance performance.

Multiple files are combined into one file by bundling. The quantity of server requests required to render an online asset, such as a web page, is decreased via bundling. Numerous unique bundles made expressly for CSS, JavaScript, etc. are possible. Having fewer files means that the browser will make fewer HTTP requests to the server or to the service that hosts your application. As a result, first-page performance is enhanced.

Code that has undergone minification has unnecessary characters removed without affecting functionality. As a result, the size of the requested assets is significantly reduced (such as CSS, images, and JavaScript files). One of the most frequent side effects of minification is the reduction of variable names to one character, as well as the removal of comments and extraneous whitespace.

Bundling and minification mainly speed up the first page request load time. After a web page has been requested, the web browser caches the static assets (JavaScript, CSS, and images). Therefore, bundling and minification don’t enhance performance when the same page, or pages, on the same site, are requested with the same assets. If bundling and minification aren’t used and the expires header isn’t set correctly on the assets, then the browser’s freshness heuristics mark the assets stale after some days. The browser also requires a validation request for each asset. Bundling and minification in this situation increase performance even after the initial page request.

Use Caching and prefetching 

Pre-fetching and caching are two essential tools for front-end web performance. Pre-fetching involves pre-loading resources such as images, scripts, and stylesheets so that they can be delivered to the user more quickly. Caching, on the other hand, involves storing assets on the user’s device so that they don’t have to be requested from the server every time the user visits the site.  

Both of these techniques have a huge impact on website performance and user experience. By pre-loading resources and caching assets, sites can load faster and be more responsive, leading to improved performance and better user experience. Additionally, pre-fetching and caching can reduce the burden on the server, which can help to keep costs down and make sites more resilient.  

So if you want to improve your site’s performance and user experience, be sure to take advantage of pre-fetching and caching.

Reduce The Number Of Server Calls.

Generally speaking, the more requests your front end sends to the server, the longer it takes to load. This is due to the fact that sending any request to the server demands full communication before the page can be rendered. There are several approaches you may take to cut down on the number of server requests required to load the website.

One of the simplest ways to cut down on server calls is to use CSS Sprites. Sprite loads a single image file combined using a collection of images rather than ten separate images to the site. The background image and background-position CSS properties can be used to display the desired image segment. By doing this, you’re minimizing the number of server requests necessary.

Reducing third-party plugins is also important as they make up a large number of external requests and cutting down on them will boost your application’s loading speed. Preventing broken links to files that don’t exist can also help.

You might also consider server-side rendering to accelerate the application’s initial load time.

Making the initial move is never easy. The future, however, belongs to those who aren’t scared to innovate and redefine conventional approaches. You can ensure that your website loads quickly and offers a positive user experience by using these web performance optimization approaches. Just be sure to keep everything simple, smart, and seamless. And keep in mind that you only have 15 seconds to make an impact!

First impressions of apps and websites are based on their user interface (UI) and front end. The ease of use, seamless navigation, and fast loading are just a few of the elements that determine whether a user will use your digital product again. Therefore, it’s crucial to consider a web solution’s performance efficiency, whether it’s an App or an e-commerce website. You will be able to do so by using the advice we’ve provided above.

Need help improving your front-end performance? Explore how our software engineering models can help your business here.

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According to Korn Ferry study, the global human talent shortage will increase to around 85 million by 2030. This highlights the severe competition for talent and the need to improve candidate experience. After all, providing a good candidate experience goes hand in hand with creating a great employer brand. Companies must evaluate their recruitment procedures to satisfy the needs of the applicants. In our humble opinion, a positive candidate experience can be derived from using: 

• A Consistent Point of Contact:  

Interviews can be a confusing and stressful experience. Having the same person guiding the applicant through the entirety of the hiring process will certainly improve candidate comfort and engagement. 

• Proactive Onboarding:  

The first days are usually very exciting and disorienting for the employees. Orientations and peer support programs can provide role clarity and social integration desperately desired by the new hires. 

• Informal interviews:  

Interviewing people in a more casual setting or over coffee chats can help remove the applicant’s anxiety and stress. 

• Effective communication:  

Often recruiters fail to fill the vacancies due to ineffective communication. Employers need to share the complete outline of the hiring process as well as address any queries related to the job description. Prompt responses at each stage will make candidates feel more valued. 

• Constructive feedback:  

Many applicants complain about never hearing back from the recruiters. By providing feedback, companies can avoid losing out on unsuccessful candidates who might be a good fit for a different vacancy in the future. The situation could also be improved if only the recruiter pays more heed to manage candidates in a more meaningful environment – i.e. by sending them constructive feedback that contains a list of the applicant’s shortcomings, strengths, and useful information/courses.   

A lot of times, reasons like technical skills gap became an excuse to shrug off candidates. However, by following these steps, there is a possibility the gap between the recruiter and the candidate be filled, enriched with a more meaningful relationship. 

How do you choose a programming language from the plethora of options available?

Mastering a new programming language can help you advance further in your career or switch careers completely. But you might be wondering how to make the right choice. After all, you will likely have to invest your time and money to learn it. The sheer number of programming languages out there does not help the situation either. This decision will likely involve several considerations like your past knowledge and coding skills, the difficulty level of a language, and your reasons for learning a new language in the first place.

Another thing you should keep in mind while deciding on a programming language is employers’ demand. If you are aiming to work for big tech giants, then we suggest prioritizing programming languages that have earned their stripes. In fact, in our blog on most In-Demand web frameworks for 2021, we helped you choose the “right” framework by highlighting the needs of your potential employers. Following the similar approach here, we will be sharing In Demand programming languages for the year. 

A recent survey by CodinGame sheds light on the popularity of programming languages and their demand by employers. According to the results, more than half of the programmers knew how to code in JavaScript, Java, and Python. These three continue to be the most widely used programming languages in the world.

On the demand side, results showed that close to 60% of the tech recruiters were on the lookout for professionals working with JavaScript and Java. These findings signal that the programmers and employers are in sync at least when it comes to these two languages. However, the same cannot be said for other languages like C, Python, etc. The demand for these languages is less than their popularity among programmers. For example, 57% of developers code in Python, but only 48% of companies need Python development. This gap is even bigger for C. 45.1% of programmers code in C however only 15.4% of companies require C development.

These insights highlight how most tech companies favor 4 programming languages: JavaScript, Java, Python, and C#. In our opinion, it’s better to stick with JavaScript as it’s the most popular programming language for a reason. As a matter of fact, JavaScript development also made it to our list of Top Ten Tech skills in Canada for 2021! Most companies developing web UIs need to interface with JavaScript. Moreover, with the introduction of NodeJS, it’s also being used to develop server-side applications as well. If you want to learn a lesser-known language to stand out, then consider TypeScript. This past October, TypeScript was named among the fastest-growing languages in GitHub’s Octoverse Report. The results also showed a small shortage for this language as 24% of companies needed TypeScript development but only 22% of developers knew it.

The survey overall highlights the dominance of few major programming languages like Java, JavaScript, and Python. The results also suggest a surplus of developers dealing with Python and C. For these developers, it would be better to switch to other languages to improve their job prospects in this competitive environment.

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What is web application architecture?

Application architecture is the representation of how different services and systems are joined together. It helps us to understand how applications or services are placed in a layered architecture, who are the different actors at each layer and what is the fundamental role of each layer.

It determines application components and different layers communicate with each other. These architectures are layered having different layers from the design or presentation layer to the data layer. Software architects or Web engineers ensure that all the elements or layers work together correctly.

How does system architecture for web application works?

In web application architecture, there are basically two parts working simultaneously, the client (frontend) and server (backend). The client represents the application UI on the browser from where the web server takes the request to the server, where the server has the code that responds to requests coming from the client. The Server manages the application logic and responds to HTTP requests.

Learn more about our technology stack and software development services here.

Models of web architecture

One-tier architecture

One-tier architecture involves putting all of the required components for a software application or technology on a single server or platform. This kind of architecture is often contrasted with multi-tiered architecture or the three-tier architecture that’s used for some Web applications and other technologies where various presentation, business, and data access layers are housed separately.

Two-tier architecture

The Two-tier architecture is divided into two parts: Client Application (Client-side) and Database (Server-side) respectively.

Also called a client-server application, the communication in this architecture takes place between the client (browser) and the server. The client system will send the request to the server system which will process it and send back the data to the client side.

Multiple-tier architecture

A Multi-tier Architecture is a software architecture in which different software components, arranged in tiers (layers), offer dedicated functionality. The most common example of multi-tier architecture is a three-tier system comprising a data management tier (encompassing one or several database servers), a client tier (interface functionality), and an application tier (business logic).

Microservices architecture

You might have heard of the word microservices if you’re a tech enthusiast. Microservices are independent services like applications, which exist completely on their own. These come with their logic, state, and deployment and interact with each other via API calls, queues, etc. depending on the requirements. These microservices combine to deliver the complete application solution.

With microservices architectures, applications are easier to scale and faster to develop allowing businesses to accelerate innovation and time-to-market for new features.

Layers and Components of Application Architecture

The application architecture is made up of several layers: design layer, frontend layer (HTML and CSS), backend or data layer (database and scripting languages), platform (browser/OS), and business layer. These layers are built on top of each other and depend on each other to create a successful project.

Presentation Layer

This layer represents the design and UI components on the client side. Users interact with this layer to send requests through the application layer to the server. It displays the data flow for the users. The main purpose of this layer is to take data from users and show the response from the server (data layer).

Our UI team can help you create the right experience to help your business attract customers’ attention.

Application Layer

The application layer consists of an API gateway. Front-end developers write code to pass the data from the presentation layer to the business logic layer where it is processed. Data will pass to APIs and get stored in the database, depending on the feature it is utilized in the business layer for application logic and to perform certain actions.

Business Layer

This layer has all implementation of application logic. Data from the application layer gets utilized here for example in a lead generation application a form is submitted in the presentation layer and data travels through APIs and is then used to send out emails or to perform any action on the lead before getting stored in the database.

Data or Backend Layer

All the data gets stored in the database and retrieved from it to use on the front end (client-side). Data travels from the database through APIs, from the application layer in creating modules or components that are converted to UI and the user then interacts with that in the presentation layer.

Conclusion:

To conclude, there are different ways to set up the architecture for applications software. Microservices architecture is the most popular choice of mid-sized and large companies like Amazon and Google. However, in order to find out more about which architecture to go with for building your project we recommend you reach out to any professional web development team that can guide you according to your needs and goals.

Want us to help you build your next big product? Contact us.

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