Categories: JavascriptWeb

MEAN Stack Apps Explained for Java Developers

This article represents brief description of What is MEAN Stack Web/Mobile App. Coming from Java background, I thought it to present an analogy for Java developers to get a quick understanding on MEAN Web/Mobile App. Please feel free to comment/suggest if I missed to mention one or more important points. Also, sorry for the typos.

Following are the key points described later in this article:

What is MEAN Web/Mobile App?
A Web Application Stack in General
Sample Web App using JEE (Spring/Hibernate) Framework
A MEAN Stack Web/Mobile App

What is MEAN Web/Mobile App?

A MEAN Stack based web/mobile app makes use of following technologies:

You may note that we are no more required to use middleware technologies such as JEE or .NET to process user request/response. Its all about Javascript. :). In following text, I shall briefly explain the skeleton of any Web application with examples and show analogy with MEAN Stack.

A Web Application Stack in General

A web application framework is required to fulfil some of the following key objectives:

One or more user interfaces for end users to interact
One or more web servers to handle user request/response
A Web framework to process user request/response
One or more databases to store the data

Following are key components of any web application framework in general:

UI
Web Server
Web application framework
Database

Sample Web App using JEE (Spring/Hibernate) Framework

In Java web application, following are key components and related technologies:

UI: This is taken care using HTML/CSS with JSP embedded tags to render dynamic data.
Web/Application Server: The web server handles user requests and sends back the response after being processed using one or more services/components. Example of such app server is Tomcat server.
Web Framework: There is required a web framework to process the user requests/response. This is where framework such as Spring, Struts and other popular Java web frameworks fit in.
Database: There are different databases that one could use. For example, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server etc.

Following diagram represents a JEE based web app.

Java Web App Framework

A MEAN Stack Web/Mobile App

A MEAN Web/Mobile app looks like following:

UI: This is taken care using AngularJS.
Web Server: This is based on NodeJS.
Web Framework: This is based on ExpressJS. Mongoose is used to connect to MongoDB database.
Database: The database is MongoDB.

Following diagram represents MEAN Stack App:

MEAN App Framework

Author
Recent Posts

Ajitesh Kumar

I have been recently working in the area of Data analytics including Data Science and Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I am also passionate about different technologies including programming languages such as Java/JEE, Javascript, Python, R, Julia, etc, and technologies such as Blockchain, mobile computing, cloud-native technologies, application security, cloud computing platforms, big data, etc. I would love to connect with you on Linkedin.
Check out my latest book titled as First Principles Thinking: Building winning products using first principles thinking.