Continuing its embracing of open source, Microsoft has today announced two new open source projects. The first is Open Application Model (OAM), a new standard for developing and operating applications on Kubernetes and other platforms
The second project is Dapr (Distributed Application Runtime), designed to make it easier to build microservice applications. Microsoft says that both OAM and Dapr “help developers remove barriers when building applications for cloud and edge”.
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Microsoft has worked on OAM with Alibaba, and the aim is to simplify the development and deployment of applications. The company explains that: “OAM is a specification for describing applications so that the application description is separated from the details of how the application is deployed onto and managed by the infrastructure. This separation of concerns is helpful for multiple reasons”.
It goes on to say:
In the real world, every Kubernetes cluster is different, from ingress to CNI to service mesh. Separating the application definition from the operational details of the cluster enables application developers to focus on the key elements of their application rather than the operational details of where it deploys. Furthermore, the separation of concerns also allows for platform architects to develop re-usable components and for application developers to focus on integrating those components with their code to quickly and easily build reliable applications. In all of this, the goal of the Open Application Model is to make simple applications easy and complex applications manageable.
The second open source project is Dapr, which Microsoft describes as “an open source, portable, event-driven runtime that makes it easy for developers to build resilient, microservice stateless and stateful applications that run on the cloud and edge”.
What does this mean in practice? Again, the aim is to simplify things for developers, whether they are creating something from scratch or working with existing code. Importantly, Dapr includes building blocks that are not dependent on any particular programming language. Developers can build applications with any language and any framework by calling these building blocks over standard APIs such as HTTP or gRPC.
Microsoft provides more details about OAM and Dapr in a pair of blog posts.
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