JVM Toolkit Akka 3: Less complex, more cloud options and a new company name
Lightbend completely revamps the implementation of the Akka actuator model in version 3, integrating projects such as Lagom and the Play Framework.
(Image: Yurchanka Siarhei / Shutterstock.com)
- Rainald Menge-Sonnentag
The company Lightbend has announced a new major version of Akka. With this release, the JVM toolkit becomes a comprehensive platform for creating applications and running them on different cloud platforms.
The Akka libraries remain at the core, while the contents of the Lightbend projects Lagom, Play Framework, Cloudstate, Cloudflow, Akka Streams and Kalix are also incorporated into the platform. Applications that rely on the 2.x libraries from Akka should continue to function smoothly.
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Alongside the new main version, Lightbend has also announced a name change: the company is now also called Akka.
Akka is a toolkit with an associated runtime environment for the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). It offers models designed to simplify the development of concurrent, distributed applications. Its core concept is based on the actuator model, which was developed in the 1970s. The concurrent units act as actuators and communication takes place via message exchange. The Erlang programming language also offers an actuator model.
Akka is written in Scala. Originally, an actuator implementation was planned in the language itself. Jonas Bonér eventually developed Akka and based it on the style of Erlang's actuator model. He presented the project to the public in January 2010. Akka can be used with both Scala and Java.
In September 2022 , Lightbend changed the license model for Akka from the Apache 2.0 license to the Business Source License (BSL).
Six years in the making
According to the blog post on the release, the first thoughts for Akka 3 came over eight years ago, and development of the new main version began in 2018 in parallel with the 2.x strand of the toolkit.
According to the post, Akka 3 is already "in production use at companies that are not yet ready to be publicly named", including a global SaaS provider with 2 million users and an online retailer that requires over one million low-latency write IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).
Enhanced SDK
Akka 3 is designed to significantly reduce complexity compared to previous versions and comes with a new SDK (Software Development Kit) and a local development environment with developer sandboxes and an event debugger.
The SDK makes it possible to create suitable components for programming with Akka: Endpoints, Entities, Views, Streaming Consumers, Workflows, and Timers. According to the blog post, this reduces the learning curve from a few weeks to a few hours.
Free choice of cloud and serverless applications
With version 3, Akka applications can also run as serverless applications on different cloud platforms (Bring Your Own Cloud, BYOC). From 2025, it should also be possible to operate in your own data center or a hybrid cloud infrastructure. According to Akka, migration from one cloud provider to another or from a cloud platform model to a serverless model is seamless.
(Image:Â Akka)
Akka 3 also offers multi-master replication: a service can run across multiple instances in multiple clouds or regions. Akka 3 relies on replicated event logging and communication via gRPC.
Further details can be found on the Akka blog and in the article on Hacker News. Akka will be holding a free webinar on the new main version on November 20.
(rme)
