Akka vs Scalatra: What are the differences?

Introduction

This markdown code presents the key differences between Akka and Scalatra in a concise manner.

1. Concurrency Model: Akka is an actor-based concurrency toolkit that allows for efficient utilization of system resources by utilizing lightweight threads called actors. It provides a high-level abstraction for writing concurrent and distributed applications. On the other hand, Scalatra is a lightweight web framework that is based on the Servlet API. It follows a traditional multi-threaded approach with a thread-per-request model for handling concurrency.

2. Focus: Akka is primarily focused on providing a platform for building highly scalable and fault-tolerant distributed applications. It offers features such as location transparency, supervision, and message passing to enable the development of reactive systems. Scalatra, on the other hand, is primarily focused on providing a simple and lightweight framework for building RESTful web applications in Scala.

3. Architecture: Akka follows the actor model, where actors are independent entities that communicate with each other by sending messages. It encourages the use of immutable messages and isolation of state within individual actors. Scalatra follows a more traditional MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture, where request/response handling is performed through the use of controllers, views, and models.

4. Scalability: Akka is designed to be highly scalable and can seamlessly distribute workloads across multiple nodes in a cluster. It provides built-in support for clustering, load balancing, and fault tolerance. Scalatra, on the other hand, does not provide any built-in mechanisms for scalability. It relies on external tools such as load balancers and distributed caches for scaling up applications.

5. Community and Ecosystem: Akka has a large and active community with a wide range of third-party libraries and tools available. It is widely used in production systems and has extensive documentation and support. Scalatra, although it has a smaller community compared to Akka, still has a dedicated user base and a growing ecosystem of plugins and extensions.

6. Learning Curve: Akka, being an actor-based concurrency toolkit, has a steeper learning curve compared to Scalatra. Developers need to familiarize themselves with the actor model and understand concepts such as message passing and supervision. On the other hand, Scalatra follows familiar web development patterns and is relatively easier to grasp for developers with experience in building web applications.

In summary, Akka and Scalatra differ in their concurrency models, focus, architecture, scalability options, community support, and learning curve. While Akka emphasizes building highly scalable and fault-tolerant distributed systems using the actor model, Scalatra focuses on providing a lightweight framework for building RESTful web applications.