Technology on backend - psit4-lamas/PSIT4-LaMaS GitHub Wiki

• Status: accepted
• Deciders: Tram Anh Duong, Vanessa Haas, Markus Wüest, Martin Wädensweiler, Aleksandar Spasojevic, David Kern
• Date: 2019-03-06

Context and Problem Statement

For our product LaMaS we needed a backend framework and had to decide which one we should use.

Decision Drivers

• use state-of-the-art technology
• don't program everything yourself, rather use features from the framework
• use something which is easily configured

Considered Options

• Tomcat (incl. JSP)
• Java Spring Framework & Spring Boot
• Google's Firebase Framework

Decision Outcome

Chosen option: "Google's Firebase Framework", because it will help us to focus on our main features without the need to worry about scalability, configurations or security on the server side.

Pros and Cons of the Options

Tomcat (incl. JSP)

• Bad, because no more state-of-the-art.
• Bad, because we could get in trouble with scalability of the server.
• Bad, because it takes a long time to configure it correctly.
• Bad, because we would risk not getting what we want.

Java Spring Framework & Spring Boot

• Good, because it has the advantage of being a Java Framework.
• Good, because all team members have previous knowledge in Java programming.
• Bad, because it takes a lot of effort to integrate authentication.
• Bad, because video streaming features would be necessary to make the application work reliably.

Google's Firebase Framework

• Good, because it's easy to integrate with our frontend library, React.
• Good, because it has a lot of nice out-of-the-box features, for example the authentication system that we can use.
• Good, because it’s better to use an established system for authentication rather than trying to build one on our own.