Chapter 1. Introducing Apache Thrift

There is a milestone in the life of every sufficiently large application that marks the point when it is too big to be maintained as a monolith. For some systems, it is in their blueprints from the very beginning, while for others, it comes as a growth induced necessity and brings along the need for massive rebuild.

Apache Thrift is one of the tools that assist in building scalable, distributed systems, spanning across different platforms and languages. Originally developed for internal use by Facebook, now it is an open source software project backed by the Apache Foundation. It is characterized by a wide range of supported languages, flexibility, and performance.

In this chapter, you will learn about the scenarios where using Apache Thrift may be necessary. You will also get familiar with its basic properties and how it is compared to other similar frameworks. It is essential to know the big picture to be able to select the best tool for your job.

Let's see how you can put Apache Thrift to good use!