Book excerpt: With over 75 million downloads per month, Spring Boot is the most widely used Java framework available. Its ease and power have revolutionized application development from monoliths to microservices. Yet Spring Boot's simplicity can also be confounding. How do developers learn enough to be productive immediately? This practical book shows you how to use this framework to write successful mission-critical applications. Mark Heckler from VMware, the company behind Spring, guides you through Spring Boot's architecture and approach, covering topics such as debugging, testing, and deployment. If you want to develop cloud native Java or Kotlin applications with Spring Boot rapidly and effectively--using reactive programming, building APIs, and creating database access of all kinds--this book is for you. Learn how Spring Boot simplifies cloud native application development and deployment Build reactive applications and extend communication across the network boundary to create distributed systems Understand how Spring Boot's architecture and approach increase developer productivity and application portability Deploy Spring Boot applications for production workloads rapidly and reliably Monitor application and system health for optimal performance and reliability Debug, test, and secure cloud-based applications painlessly