As more and more projects start incorporating reactive programming, they start to discover that the only way to get the full benefit of that change is to ensure that they have a fully reactive stack. There are a number of messaging systems and data stores that enable this fully reactive stack, but there has been a big piece missing when it comes to accessing relational database systems in a fully reactive way. This talk presents the Reactive Relational Database Connectivity (R2DBC) project. The project is a test-bed for what a reactive API would look like when paired with relational database access. This talk will explain how the API works, the benefits of using it, and how it contrasts with the ADBC project proposed as a successor to JDBC.
Ben Hale leads Pivotal’s Java Cloud Foundry efforts including being a founding member of the Cloud Native Buildpacks CNCF Sandbox project and leading the Cloud Foundry Java Buildpack. In addition to this work, he’s very involved in the Reactive Programming scene founding the Reactive Relational Database Connectivity (R2DBC) project, being a spec lead and committer on the RSocket Reactive networking protocol, and being a long-time contributor to Project Reactor. In what little spare time he has left, Ben loves riding his bike, especially in the high mountains of the Italian Dolomites.