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Learn how to use Docker containers for iterative development

Learn how to use Docker containers for iterative development.

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Guided Project

Open Liberty

198 Enrolled
3.9
(9 Reviews)

At a Glance

Learn how to use Docker containers for iterative development.

You will learn how to set up, run, and iteratively develop a simple REST application in a container with Open Liberty and Docker.
Open Liberty is an application server designed for the cloud. It’s small, lightweight, and designed with modern cloud-native application development in mind. Open Liberty simplifies the development process for these applications by automating the repetitive actions associated with running applications inside containers, like rebuilding the image and stopping and starting the container.
You’ll also learn how to create and run automated tests for your application and container.
The implementation of the REST application can be found in the start/src directory. To learn more about this application and how to build it, check out the Creating a RESTful web service guide.

What is Docker?
Docker is a tool that you can use to deploy and run applications with containers. You can think of Docker like a virtual machine that runs various applications. However, unlike a typical virtual machine, you can run these applications simultaneously on a single system and independent of one another.
Learn more about Docker on the official Docker website.

What is a container?
A container is a lightweight, stand-alone package that contains a piece of software that is bundled together with the entire environment that it needs to run. Containers are small compared to regular images and can run on any environment where Docker is set up. Moreover, you can run multiple containers on a single machine at the same time in isolation from each other.
Learn more about containers on the official Docker website.

Why use a container to develop?
Consider a scenario where you need to deploy your application on another environment. Your application works on your local machine, but when you try to run it on your cloud production environment, it breaks. You do some debugging and discover that you built your application with Java 8, but this cloud production environment has only Java 11 installed. Although this issue is generally easy to fix, you don’t want your application to be missing dozens of version-specific dependencies. You can develop your application in this cloud environment, but that requires you to rebuild and repackage your application every time you update your code and wish to test it.
To avoid this kind of problem, you can instead choose to develop your application in a container locally, bundled together with the entire environment that it needs to run. By doing this, you know that at any point in your iterative development process, the application can run inside that container. This helps avoid any unpleasant surprises when you go to test or deploy your application down the road. Containers run quickly and do not have a major impact on the speed of your iterative development.

Created by 

The Open Liberty Project team

Estimated Effort

20 Minutes

Level

Intermediate

Skills You Will Learn

Containers, Docker

Language

English

Course Code

GPXX0FTCEN

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