DZone Research

This data-forward, analytics-driven world would be lost without its database and data storage solutions. As more organizations continue to transition their software to cloud-based systems, the growing demand for database innovation and enhancements has climbed to novel heights. We are upon a new era of the "Modern Database," where databases must both store data and ensure that data is prepped and primed securely for insights and analytics, integrity and quality, and microservices and cloud-based architectures.

In our 2023 Database Systems Trend Report, we explore these database trends, assess current strategies and challenges, and provide forward-looking assessments of the database technologies most commonly used today. Further, readers will find insightful articles — written by several of our very own DZone Community experts — that cover hand-selected topics, including what "good" database design is, database monitoring and observability, and how to navigate the realm of cloud databases.

The broader rise in automation has paved the way for advanced capabilities and time savings for developers and tech professionals, especially when it comes to testing. There are increasingly more conversations around how to transition tests to an automated cadence as well as a deeper push toward better automated testing integration throughout the SDLC. Solutions such as artificial intelligence (AI) and low code play an important role in implementing tests for development and testing teams, expanding test coverage and eliminating time spent on redundant tasks. It's a win-win-win.

In DZone's 2023 Automated Testing Trend Report, we further assess current trends related to automated testing, covering everything from architecture and test-driven development to observed benefits of AI and low-code tools. The question is no longer should we automate tests; it's how do we better automate tests and integrate them throughout CI/CD pipelines to ensure high degrees of test coverage? This question will be examined through our original research, expert articles from DZone Community members, and other insightful resources.

As organizations’ needs and requirements evolve, it’s critical for development to meet these demands at scale. The various realms in which mobile, web, and low-code applications are built continue to fluctuate. This Trend Report will further explore these development trends and how they relate to scalability within organizations, highlighting application challenges, code, and more.

The proliferation of containers in recent years has increased the speed, portability, and scalability of software infrastructure and deployments across all kinds of application architectures and cloud-native environments. Now, with more and more organizations migrated to the cloud, what's next? 

The subsequent need to efficiently manage and monitor containerized environments remains a crucial task for teams. With organizations looking to better leverage their containers — and some still working to migrate out of their own monolithic environments — the path to containerization and architectural modernization remains a perpetual climb. 

In DZone's 2023 Containers Trend Report, we will explore the current state of containers, key trends and advancements in global containerization strategies, and constructive content for modernizing your software architecture. This will be examined through DZone-led research, expert community articles, and other helpful resources for designing and building containerized applications. 

Seamless communication — that, among other consequential advantages, is the ultimate goal when integrating your software. And today, integrating modern software means fusing various applications and/or systems — many times across distributed environments — with the common goal of unifying isolated data. This effort often signifies the transition of legacy applications to cloud-based systems and messaging infrastructure via microservices and REST APIs.

So what's next? Where is the path to seamless communication and nuanced architecture taking us? Dive into our 2023 Software Integration Trend Report and fill the gaps among modern integration practices by exploring trends in APIs, microservices, and cloud-based systems and migrations. You have to integrate to innovate!

The DevOps movement has paved the way for CI/CD and streamlined application delivery and release orchestration. These nuanced methodologies have not only increased the scale and speed at which we release software, but also redistributed responsibilities onto the developer and led to innovation and automation throughout the SDLC.

DZone's 2023 DevOps: CI/CD, Application Delivery, and Release Orchestration Trend Report explores these derivatives of DevOps by diving into how AIOps and MLOps practices affect CI/CD, the proper way to build an effective CI/CD pipeline, strategies for source code management and branching for GitOps and CI/CD, and more. Our research builds on previous years with its focus on the challenges of CI/CD, a responsibility assessment, and the impact of release strategies, to name a few. The goal of this Trend Report is to provide developers with the information they need to further innovate on their integration and delivery pipelines.

Data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other security vulnerabilities have become the norm in recent years. Hackers have become shrewder. And with that, development teams bear the responsibility of ensuring that all stages of the SDLC have strong security.

DZone's 2022 Trend Report, Enterprise Application Security: Building Secure and Resilient Applications, focuses on key factors of security practices including supply chain security, principles of zero-trust security, how to secure mobile applications, common DevSecOps practices, and what to do after your organization experiences a security breach. Our research dives into sentiments on perceived application security risks, development techniques for securing applications, and where the role of security lies for teams within today's organizational structures. The goal of this Trend Report is to equip developers with the tools, best practices, and advice they need to help implement security at every stage of the SDLC.

The concept of observability was first leveraged over 110 years ago. It was initially known as telemetry, and in 1912, it used the city of Chicago’s telephone lines to transmit data from the electric power plants to a central control station. Today, modern observability is still very much focused on the interplay of data to yield informed inputs and outputs of systems. Sprinkle in site reliability engineering (SRE), and there should be little to no performance issues in distributed systems, right? In an ideal world, yes, but in reality, there is still work to be done.

DZone’s 2022 Trend Report, Performance and Site Reliability: Observability for Distributed Systems, takes a holistic view of where developers stand in their observability practices. Through the research and expert-contributed articles, it offers a primer on distributed systems observability, including how to build an open-source observability toolchain, dives into distributed tracing, and takes a look at prospective performance degradation patterns. It also provides insight into how to create an SRE practice, as well as tactics to conduct an effective incident retrospective. The goal of this Trend Report is to offer a developer-focused assessment of what the current state of observability is and how it fits in with modern performance practices.

In 2022, Kubernetes has become a central component for containerized applications. And it is nowhere near its peak. In fact, based on our research, 94 percent of survey respondents believe that Kubernetes will be a bigger part of their system design over the next two to three years. With the expectations of Kubernetes becoming more entrenched into systems, what do the adoption and deployment methods look like compared to previous years?

DZone's Kubernetes in the Enterprise Trend Report provides insights into how developers are leveraging Kubernetes in their organizations. It focuses on the evolution of Kubernetes beyond container orchestration, advancements in Kubernetes observability, Kubernetes in AI and ML, and more. Our goal for this Trend Report is to help inspire developers to leverage Kubernetes in their own organizations.

Every modern application and organization collects data. With that, there is a constant demand for database systems to expand, scale, and take on more responsibilities. Database architectures have become more complex, and as a result, there are more implementation choices. An effective database management system allows for quick access to database queries, and an organization can efficiently make informed decisions. So how does one effectively scale a database system and not sacrifice its quality?

Our Database Systems Trend Report offers answers to this question by providing industry insights into database management selection and evaluation criteria. It also explores database management patterns for microservices, relational database migration strategies, time series compression algorithms and their applications, advice for the best data governing practices, and more. The goal of this report is to set up organizations for scaling success.

According to our 2022 Microservices survey, 93% of our developer respondents work for an organization that runs microservices. This number is up from 74% when we asked this question in our 2021 Containers survey. With most organizations running microservices and leveraging containers, we no longer have to discuss the need to adopt these practices, but rather how to scale them to benefit organizations and development teams. 

So where do adoption and scaling practices of microservices and containers go from here? In DZone's 2022 Trend Report, Microservices and Containerization, our research and expert contributors dive into various cloud architecture practices, microservices orchestration techniques, security, and advice on design principles. The goal of this Trend Report is to explore the current state of microservices and containerized environments to help developers face the challenges of complex architectural patterns.

As the adoption of no-code and low-code development solutions continues to grow, there comes many questions of its benefits, flexibility, and overall organizational role. Through the myriad of questions, there is one main theme in the benefit of its use: leveraging no-code and low-code practices for automation and speed to release.

But what are the pain points that these solutions seek to address? What are the expected vs. realized benefits of adopting a no- or low-code solution? What are the current gaps that these solutions leave in development practices? This Trend Report provides expert perspectives to answer these questions. We present a historical perspective on no and low code, offer advice on how to migrate legacy applications to low code, dive into the challenges of securing no- and low-code environments, share insights into no- and low-code testing, discuss how low code is playing a major role in the democratization of software development, and more.

Data is at the center of everything we do. As each day passes, more and more of it is collected. With that, there’s a need to improve how we accept, store, and interpret it. What role do data pipelines play in the software profession? How are data pipelines designed? What are some common data pipeline challenges? These are just a few of the questions we address in our research.

In DZone’s 2022 Trend Report, "Data Pipelines: Ingestion, Warehousing, and Processing," we review the key components of a data pipeline, explore the differences between ETL, ELT, and reverse ETL, propose solutions to common data pipeline design challenges, dive into engineered decision intelligence, and provide an assessment on the best way to modernize testing with data synthesis. The goal of this Trend Report is to provide insights into and recommendations for the best ways to accept, store, and interpret data.

As with most 2022 trends in the development world, discussions around integration focus on the same topic: speed. What are the common integration patterns and anti-patterns, and how do they help or hurt overall operational efficiency?  

The theme of speed is what we aim to cover in DZone’s 2022 "Enterprise Application Integration" Trend Report. Through our expert articles, we offer varying perspectives on cloud-based integrations vs. on-premise models, how organizational culture impacts successful API adoption, the different use cases for GraphQL vs. REST, and why the 2020s should now be considered the "Events decade." The goal of this Trend Report is to provide you with diverse perspectives on integration and allow you to decide which practices are best for your organization. 

With the need for companies to deliver capabilities faster, it has become increasingly clear that DevOps is a practice that many enterprises must adopt (if they haven’t already). A strong CI/CD pipeline leads to a smoother release process, and a smoother release process decreases time to market.

In DZone’s DevOps: CI/CD and Application Release Orchestration Trend Report, we provide insight into how CI/CD has revolutionized automated testing, offer advice on why an SRE is important to CI/CD, explore the differences between managed and self-hosted CI/CD, and much more. The goal of this Trend Report is to offer guidance to our global audience of DevOps Engineers, Automation Architects, and all those in between on how to best adopt DevOps practices to help scale the productivity of their teams.

In recent years, artificial intelligence has become less of a buzzword and more of an adopted process across the enterprise. With that, there is a growing need to increase operational efficiency as customer demands arise. AI platforms have become increasingly more sophisticated, and there has become the need to establish guidelines and ownership.  

In DZone’s 2022 Enterprise AI Trend Report, we explore MLOps, explainability, and how to select the best AI platform for your business. We also share a tutorial on how to create a machine learning service using Spring Boot, and how to deploy AI with an event-driven platform. The goal of this Trend Report is to better inform the developer audience on practical tools and design paradigms, new technologies, and the overall operational impact of AI within the business.  

This is a technology space that's constantly shifting and evolving. As part of our December 2022 re-launch, we've added new articles pertaining to knowledge graphs, a solutions directory for popular AI tools, and more. 

As enterprise applications increasingly adopt distributed systems and cloud-based architectures, the complexity of application performance management (APM) has grown accordingly. To address this new set of challenges, traditional APM is making a push towards intelligent automation (AIOps), self-healing applications, and a convergence of ITOps and DevOps.  

DZone’s 2021 Application Performance Management Trend Report dives deeper into the management of application performance in distributed systems, including observability, intelligent monitoring, and rapid, automated remediation. It also provides an overview of how to choose an APM tool provider, common practices for self-healing, and how to manage pain points that distributed cloud-based architectures cause. Through research and thoughtfully curated articles, this Trend Report offers a current assessment of where real enterprises are in their journey to design APM approaches for modern architectures. 

In DZone’s 2020 Kubernetes and the Enterprise Trend Report, we found that over 90% of respondents to our survey reported leveraging containerized applications in a production environment, nearly doubling since we asked the same question in 2018. As containerization approaches peak saturation, Kubernetes has also become an indispensable tool for enterprises managing large and complex, container-based architectures, with 77% of respondents reporting Kubernetes usage in their organizations.  

Building upon findings from previous years that indicate the technical maturity of containers and container orchestration, DZone’s 2021 Kubernetes and the Enterprise Trend Report will explore more closely the growing ecosystem and tooling, use cases, and advanced strategies for Kubernetes adoption in the enterprise.

In the era of high-profile data breaches, rampant ransomware, and a constantly shifting government regulatory environment, development teams are increasingly taking on the responsibility of integrating security design and practices into all stages of the software development lifecycle (SDLC).

In DZone’s 2021 Application Security Trend Report, readers will discover how the shift in security focus across the SDLC is impacting development teams — from addressing the most common threat agents and attack vectors to exploring the best practices and tools being employed to develop secure applications.

Development speed, engineering capacity, and technical skills are among the most prevalent bottlenecks for teams tasked with modernizing legacy codebases and innovating new solutions. In response, an explosion of “low-code” solutions has promised to mitigate such challenges by abstracting software development to a high-level visual or scripting language used to build integrations, automate processes, construct UI, and more. While many tools aim to democratize development by reducing the required skills, others seek to enhance developer productivity by eliminating needs such as custom code for boilerplate app components. 

Over the last decade, the concept of low code has matured into a category of viable solutions that are expected to be incorporated within mainstream application development. In this Trend Report, DZone examines advances in the low-code space, including developers' perceptions of low-code solutions, various use cases and adoption trends, and strategies for successful integration of these tools into existing development processes.

In 2020, DevOps became more crucial than ever as companies moved to distributed work and accelerated their push toward cloud-native and hybrid infrastructures. In this Trend Report, we will examine what this acceleration looked like for development teams across the globe, and dive deeper into the latest DevOps practices that are advancing continuous integration, continuous delivery, and release automation.

With a mainstream shift toward cloud-native development, more organizations than ever are realizing real benefits as they modernize their architectures with containerized environments. While this move promises to accelerate application development, it also introduces a new set of challenges that occur with a fundamentally altered software delivery pipeline, ranging from security to complexity and scaling.

In DZone's 2021 Containers Trend Report, we explore the current state of container adoption, uncover common pain points of adopting containers in a legacy environment, and explore modern solutions for building scalable, secure, stable, and performant containerized applications.

The web is evolving fast, and developers are quick to adopt new tools and technologies. DZone’s recent 2021 Modern Web Development survey served to help better understand how developers build successful web applications, with a focus on how decisions are made about where computation and storage should occur.

This Trend Report will help readers examine the pros and cons of critical web development design choices, explore the latest development tools and technologies, and learn what it takes to build a modern, performant, and scalable web application. Readers will also find contributor insights written by DZone community members, who cover topics ranging from web performance optimization and testing to a comparison of JavaScript frameworks.

Read on to learn more!

Discover what you need to know about the state of API design and management. This report explores a wide range of topics from REST API discovery and navigation to common integration pain points and how developers are thinking about APIs.

This report covers in-depth original research on developer preferences surrounding API programs and integrated systems. Additionally, experts in the field share their perspectives on effective API design as well as secure API strategies and best practices.  

At the core of every modern application is an endless, diverse stream of data and with it, an inherent demand for scalability, increased speed, higher performance, and strengthened security. Although data management tools and strategies have matured rapidly in recent years, the complexity of architectural and implementation choices has intensified as well, creating unique challenges — and opportunities — for those who are designing data-intensive applications.

DZone’s 2021 Data Persistence Trend Report examines the current state of the industry, with a specific focus on effective tools and strategies for data storage and persistence. Featured in this report are observations and analyses of survey results from our research, as well as an interview with industry leader Jenny Tsai-Smith. Readers will also find contributor insights written by DZone community members, who cover topics ranging from microservice polyglot persistence scenarios to data storage solutions and the Materialized Path pattern. Read on to learn more!

Edge computing aims to solve cloud computing challenges amidst the continued monumental growth of the Internet of Things. While IoT causes a massive data volume problem, edge computing addresses the classic data locality problem. The latter helps solve the former, but edge computing is a much bigger concept than "IoT data filtration" alone.

The intersection of these paradigms is particularly hard to pin down given their immaturity at the implementation level. DZone's recent 2020 Edge Computing and IoT survey served to help better understand the state of the industry, as well as the mind of the practicing IoT programmer and edge-computing user. This Trend Report presents observations and analyses of survey results and an interview with industry leader Muhammad Rehman. Readers will also find content written by DZone community members, including a timely article that illustrates the impactful role that edge and cloud computing played in healthcare over the last year.

Want to know how the average Kubernetes user thinks? Wondering how modern infrastructure and application architectures interact? Interested in container orchestration trends? Look no further than DZone’s latest Trend Report, “Kubernetes and the Enterprise.” This report will explore key developments in myriad technical areas related to the omnipresent container management platform, plus expert contributor articles highlighting key research findings like scaling a microservices architecture, cluster management, deployment strategies, and much more!

Data warehousing has become an absolute must in today’s fast-paced, data-driven, modern business landscape. As the demand for informed business decisions and analytics continues to skyrocket, data warehouses are gaining in popularity, especially as more and more businesses adopt cloud-based data warehouses.

DZone’s 2020 Data Warehousing Trend Report explores data warehouse adoption across industries, including key challenges, cloud storage, and common data tools such as data lakes, data virtualization, and ETL/ELT. In this report, readers will find original research, an exclusive interview with "the father of data warehousing," and additional resources with helpful tips, best practices, and more.

Organizations are constantly working to build up their big data capabilities with hopes to compete in the modern economy. SQL and NoSQL database types were supposed to help organizations identify and make sense of hidden patterns in the data that businesses collected. In recent years, however, the momentum of the big data movement has seemed to slow as business leaders around the world have failed to realize the results that were promised several years ago. 

As the momentum has decelerated, how is the use of SQL and NoSQL databases evolving to support these efforts as businesses attempt to course correct in the big data era? In DZone’s 2020 Trend Report “Database Evolution: SQL or NoSQL in the Age of Big Data,” we explore the role of two popular database types SQL and NoSQL in big data initiatives over the next 6-12 months. Readers will find original research, interviews with industry experts, and additional resources with helpful tips, best practices, and more.

Continuous testing isn’t just about automation or CI/CD pipelines. CT involves testing throughout the SDLC — automating the appropriate tests, implementing the proper policies, and ensuring teams have effective test automation frameworks in place.

This report includes key findings from our research and insightful, new content from DZone contributors that covers the importance of continuous testing in the SDLC, when and why to integrate test automation, and six types of automated testing frameworks. You’ll also have a first look at our exclusive interview with industry expert Alan Page, author of How We Test Software at Microsoft, about modern testing trends.

In DZone’s 2020 Application Performance Monitoring Trend Report, we explore state-of-the-art tools and processes, the integration of machine learning and automation, and how emerging trends in APM will play a major role over the next 6-12 months.

Readers will discover key findings from our original research and a DZone-exclusive interview with DevOps activist Andreas Grabner. Also included are new articles from DZone contributors, whom shared their insights into APM's impact on team culture and the end-user experience, AIOps, and considerations and priorities for growth-minded organizations.

The marriage of Development and Operations has proven a game-changer for high performing organizations. As a leading tactic in making this marriage work, organizations began to adopt the Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) model. DZone surveyed 415 developers on the ways in which DevOps teams are building up and taking advantage of their engineering maturity to establish fully functioning CI/CD pipelines.

This report will include original research, high-quality content from DZone’s most reputable contributors, as well as a DZone-exclusive interview with Gene Kim, renowned author and DevOps thought leader, on his advice for achieving pipeline maturity in 2020.

Getting to a place where a dashboard can be effective for all end-users, regardless of their understanding of data manipulation and analysis, is easier said than done.

To help you avoid common pitfalls, make the most out of your datasets, and create robust visualizations, we’ve sought the opinion of experts in the industry to share their knowledge on what it takes to up your data analytics toolset in 2020.

Trends in cloud data storage continue to accelerate at a rapid pace. Now more than ever, organizations must evaluate their current and future data storage needs to find solutions that align with business goals. While cloud databases are relatively new to the scene, they show tremendous prospect in securing and managing data.

In selecting our topic for this trend report, we found the amount of promise and advancement in the space to be unparalleled. This report highlights DZone’s original research on cloud databases and contributions from the community, as well as introduces new offerings within DZone trend reports.

Questions around how to efficiently manage microservices, accelerate deployments, and make applications scalable are answered through cloud-native technology. Cloud-native is all about taking advantage of the cloud in every way possible. This results in faster, more efficient ways to run, develop, and deploy applications — every aspect of your application infrastructure has been adopted and implemented with the cloud in mind.

In this report, we detail key findings from our original research and address how cloud native will add business value, the role of microservices in adopting cloud-native technology, and what business executives are saying about cloud-native.

There were few initial indications that Kubernetes would become the technology standard for container orchestration that it is today. As an open-source product backed by Google’s resources and community, Kubernetes entered the market as an easily accessible and authoritative tool. The rise of Kubernetes came at a fortuitous time for organizations grappling with DevOps transformations and enterprise-wide CI/CD optimization, and the once-groundbreaking tool is now commonplace across the CI/CD lifecycle.

In light of the prominence and growing necessity of Kubernetes in any discussion of CI/CD processes, we examine the present and future state of both Kubernetes and CI/CD individually and together as cooperative and opposing entities.

For years, security has been an afterthought — functionality that developers and product managers often address at the last minute. Security, like any other part of software development, is iterative; it takes rounds of testing and attention to detail to eliminate vulnerabilities. More organizations are beginning to understand the importance of security testing and integration, and as a result, they have started to incorporate security into their DevOps pipelines. With this in mind, we consulted industry experts and leaders about the state of DevSecOps adoption and implementation to help readers understand more effective ways to manage security throughout every step of the SDLC.

JavaScript is constantly at the top of developer surveys. With the rise of Single Page Applications and front-end frameworks, and the onslaught of languages that now compile into JS, it's easy to see that JavaScript will continue to play a pivotal role in front-end and back-end development for the foreseeable future. What that future looks like exactly is in flux, especially as it relates to which frameworks are in vogue and which are on their way out. DZone’s JavaScript Frameworks Trend Report provides the perspectives of industry professionals and leaders, detailing the latest news and trends concerning JavaScript frameworks, all with the hope of giving readers a better understanding of which of these frameworks is right for their specific development needs.

Industry leaders discuss the latest trends in machine learning. We dive into using machine learning with microserivces, deploying machine learning models in real-life applications, and where the field is going over the next 12 months. 

DZone Trend Reports expand on the tech content that our readers say is most helpful, including thought leadership and in-depth, original DZone research. The Migrating to Microservices Trend Report features expert predictions on the next phase of microservices adoption in the enterprise, as well as insights into some challenges and opportunities presented by current usage patterns.

DZone Trend Reports highlight thought leadership from tech experts as well as original DZone research. The Kubernetes in the Enterprise Trend Report, the first to focus exclusively on K8s, features insights into developer preferences and work habits related to Kubernetes and containerization. Experts on K8s also dive into the benefits and challenges of integrating the Kubernetes ecosystem into the enterprise environment.

DZone Trend Reports dive into tech topics our readers most want to explore, featuring thought leadership from experts as well as original DZone research. The Scaling DevOps Trend Report includes survey insights on developers' experiences and preferences regarding DevOps processes and tools. Experts also share their perspectives on growing DevOps adoption across an organization, necessary cultural shifts, and the role of security in mature DevOps environments.

DZone Trend Reports zoom in on the content from our Research Guides that readers have found most useful. The API Management Trend Report features in-depth original research on developer preferences surrounding API programs and integrated systems. Experts in the field also share their perspectives on the importance of developer experience to API strategy, the business value of various API types, and the challenges of API-driven digital transformation.

DZone Trend Reports will expand on the content from DZone Research Guides that our readers have told us is most useful. The Application Security Trend Report analyzes new developments in the increasingly important field of AppSec to predict what's next.