One of the most important things to decide while building a mobile or web application is the Technology stack. Selecting the right technology stack is the most important step as it influences the performance of your Application and vice versa the type of application you are building also influences the technology stack selection.
What is a Technology Stack?
A technology stack is a combination of software products and programming languages to create a web or mobile application.
Structure of a Technology Stack:
1. Front-end: The front end is a visual part of your application that the users will see and interact with. This Interaction can happen through a web browser or a mobile app. The Front-end technology stack is made up of JavaScript, CSS, HTML
- Back-end: The critical thing to understand about the Back-end tech stack is that it is all about the inner workings of an Application. Structure-wise, the back-end side consists of the following elements:
- Programming languages (for example JavaScript, Python, PHP )
- Frameworks (for example Ruby on Rails, Flask, Django, Swift, or Objective-C)
- Databases (for example, MongoDB and MySQL)
- Server providers (Apache, Nginx, etc.)
3. Middleware: The Middleware layer in a technology stack consists of content management systems, web servers, and other similar tools that support web application development.
Factors to be considered while selecting a Technology Stack:
1) Size of application: The size of the application usually is proportional to the Nature of the Application and the quality of the Architecture.
2) Scalability: Application scalability is the potential of an Application to grow in time, being able to efficiently handle more and more requests per minute (RPM). It’s not just a simple tweak you can turn on/off; it’s a long-time process that touches almost every single item in your stack, including both the hardware and software sides of the system.
3) Maintainability: Software maintainability is defined as the ease with which a software system or a component can be modified, to correct faults, improve performance or other attributes, or adapt to a changing environment.
Why is Maintainability important? Being highly maintainable is the key to reducing approximately 75% of most systems’ life cycle costs.
4) Development cost: Application Development cost relies upon highlights and functionalities of the Application. The development cost of an Application depends on some factors such as:
- Your Idea
- Technology Platform
- User Interface/App Screen Design
- Hybrid or Native
- Localization
- Back-end
- Developer cost
5) Security: Application security is the process of developing, adding, and testing security features within the applications to prevent security vulnerabilities against threats such as unauthorized access and modifications.
Types of Application security:
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Encryption
- Logging
- Application security testing
6) Time to market: It can be defined as a term for the period of time between the first ideas around a product and its eventual availability on the consumer market.