The tech stack
High level overview of technologies used within the Joule platform
Last updated
High level overview of technologies used within the Joule platform
Last updated
Joules architecture principles is to keep everything as simple as needed to be, provide SDK for customisations and leverage key mature technologies that are able to support a wide array of use cases.
When developing Joule the desired was to keep the solution as small as possible to enable deployment on to any JVM supported hardware. This meant smaller independent established frameworks needed to be considered to provide the key features Joule needed.
Therefore, frameworks such as Spring where not consider even though the main developer has many years development experience using the Spring ecosystem. The result is, the use case deployment artefact size is reduced and can be managed to the components needed.
Selection consideration used:
Best of breed within category
Modern and proven in the wild
Lightweight with minimal dependencies
Standards based to enable solution switch if needed
Has a strong community
Joule follows a component driven architecture approach to bring new features to the platform incrementally while leveraging existing assets.
GraalVM was primarily chosen for its ability to support Python and Javascript within the Java processing environment. However, further benefits such as fast process startup time, lean runtime and low resource usage has made this a no-regrets decision.
Key features used:
Compile and Runtime JRE
Dynamic scripting support for Python, Javascript and Node.js
Joule uses DuckDB as an internal analytics database solution. This is a lightweight, open-source, portable and performant modern database solution that is gaining significant traction since v1.0.0.
Key features used:
Event capture and storage
Metrics engine
Enrichment processing
Data export
Low-latency data access
Open access to a Joule nodes is through Rest APIs. The Javalin web framework library is used due to its lightweight, simple and flexible approach to development.
Key features used:
Jetty Http server
OpenAPI and Swagger Docs
Web sockets for event ingestion and distribution
SSL support
All developed connector integrations could have easily been provided using the Sprint Integration framework at a overhead cost which was not acceptable. This has meant a focused approach on the key OOTB solutions provided.
All connector integrations are developed against client libraries and updated every six months.
