We all must have heard the trending tech points like MEAN Stack, MEAN Stack Web App Development, Advantages and Disadvantages of MEAN Stack, etc. But are you unaware of some or all of these tech glossaries?
You are on the best page, we will guide you through all the required details of MEAN Stack development along with MEAN Stack benefits, components, advantages, and disadvantages.
What is Technology Stack? Technology Stack: Introduction
A technology stack is a set of programming languages or software tools utilized to ease up the process of software development. The variance in Computer and IT ecosystem has given many combinations to developers for efficient web application development over the years. MEAN stack is one such combination. MEAN stack allows developers to focus on working on applications that differentiate business rather than combining the components.
Must Read: Why use AngularJs?
What is the MEAN stack?
MEAN stack is a JavaScript-based framework for developing Web applications. Further, the stack consists of four popular technologies:
- MongoDB ( Document Database )
- Express.js ( Node.js framework )
- Angular Js ( Front-End framework )
- Node.js ( JavaScript Web Server )
MongoDB
MongoDB is a well-known database server that stores data structures in binary JSON format. MongoDB is identified as a NoSQL database program that helps in handling large-scale data sets efficiently.
Express.js
Express.js is an open-source Node.js framework for back-end web application development. The flexibility in Express.js makes back-end development easy for developers.
Angular Js
Angular Js is an open-source front-end framework based on JavaScript. Angular helps building SPA (Single Page Applications).
Node.js
Node.js is an open-source framework that supports cross-platform runtime in a JavaScript environment. It is considered a great platform for executing high-performing and scalable server-side applications.
Also Check: Angular And NodeJs : A Perfect Combination of Frontend and Backend Technologies
How does MEAN Stack work?
Here we can see the flow of the MEAN stack components in different Tiers.
- Web Tier: Angular
- Server Tier: Express + Node
- Database Tier: MongoDB
Now that we have structure, let’s break down each MEAN stack component in its respective Tier.
1. Web Tier
Angular Js for front-end
The framework works on MVVM (Model-view-view model) architecture. It allows extending HTML tags with metadata in order to develop dynamic interactive web pages and applications.
The modular structure of Angular Js allows you to differentiate the entire application into exclusive features. Thus, you can easily identify the reusable chunks of code and save time.
Benefits Of Angular Js:
- Angular Js allows you to include validation, localization, and communication with the back-end service.
- Angular Js provide lazy loading. This allows the browser to instantly show the data users have requested, without having them download the entire data.
- The component-based architecture in Angular makes sure that new developers don’t find it difficult to understand the application code.
- CLI (Command Line Interface) of Angular simplifies the app development process and enhances the code quality.
- The dependency injection function in Angular enhances both the performance and development process of the application.
- The Ivy renderer reduces bundle size and straightaway makes large-scale applications much lighter.
- Typescript allows the developers to spot and correct errors on the go.
- The declarative view function automatically loads the components as per the layout as a result developers save a lot of time.
2. Server Tier
Here, Express.js and Node.js work simultaneously for server-side features.
Express.js
The use of Express.js is the highlight in MEAN stack development as a result of its flexibility. It ensures a proper data transfer to the end-user by managing the interactions between the front-end and database.
Benefits of Express.js:
- It is a framework designed to handle the processes of your application without compromising it.
- Express.js is excellent at handling errors which provides easy templates to speed up your development, given that Express.js saves time by ensuring that you don’t have to redefine a variable within a shared namespace.
- It allows you to add nodes and extra resources as per your requirements and make your application scalable.
- Express.js supports the caching feature reducing the loading time of your web pages.
Node.js
This open-source framework uses asynchronous events to process multiple connections simultaneously. Further, Node.js helps the framework to use single-thread architecture, providing a top-quality user experience across multiple connections.
Benefits of Node.js:
- It shortens the time to market cycle.
- Immediate feedback from the production environment makes deployment easy.
- Node.js provides better scalability.
- It eliminates the necessity to switch between the backend and the frontend.
- Node.js has a huge developer support community.
- MVP development is easy with Node.js.
- Easy learning curve and hence anyone with knowledge of JavaScript and object-oriented programming basics can grasp Node.js.
3. Database Tier
MongoDB
MongoDB stores data provided in different features from users at the front-end. It processes JSON files created at Angular Js and passed through Express.js and stores them.
One of the major benefits of using MongoDB is its Dynamic NoSQL database nature. As a result, developers choose MongoDB over MySQL for handling the database in an efficient manner.
Why do developers choose MongoDB over MySQL?
MySQL is the first choice for many developers but that has changed in recent times because of MongoDB features.
MongoDB has a more flexible design schema compared to MySQL. MySQL does not allow developers to make any modifications without making changes to the schema. MongoDB will allow you to modify without making changes.
MongoDB is so powerful that the performance remains stable even with the addition of non-relational documents from the developers.
MySQL works well with structured data sets which are small in size. But, for large unstructured data using MySQL will not be a good idea. MongoDB can handle large unstructured data sets with fast speeds.
All in all benefits of MongoDB are unmatchable and no wonder it’s an essential part of MEAN stack development.
MEAN Stack Architecture: Components of MEAN Stack
Advantages of MEAN stack
Let’s take the benefit of the information we have regarding components of the MEAN stack in order to understand the advantages it brings to web application development.
✦ Cost-efficient
MEAN Stack Developers can finish the project all by themselves. In addition, you don’t need to hire separate developers for frontend and backend or database management. This reduces the count, in turn reducing the cost of building your web application. MEAN Stack is a combination of open source technologies, which helps developers keep the cost to a minimum.
✦ Simple Development process
MEAN stack uses JavaScript incomplete code section. The client and server-side language are the same in the MEAN stack, therefore minimizing the scope for issues in the development process. Angular allows the developers to reuse the code making the process smoother.
✦ Flexibility in technology switch
MEAN stack is a dream come true for developers because it provides a high level of flexibility when it comes to switching between technologies. For example, if you started coding in Node.js but in the due course of time you realized that Angular Js would have been a better choice, you can easily switch between these two languages without adding any complications to your project.
✦ Simple testing
MEAN stack lets you test an application on the cloud platform easily. It also allows you to add that extra information as MongoDB is specifically designed for this purpose, providing full cluster support and automatic replication in the cloud.
✦ Community support
JavaScript is one of the most popular web programming languages. Hence, it has an active developer community that provides solutions to queries raised by JavaScript developers.
✦ Security
As discussed earlier MEAN stack has a three-tier separation which, if used with best practices and correct network isolation, should prevent your end-users from having access to the business logic and prevent any access to your database layer. Therefore, your application is designed to avoid any malicious attack or user interaction that might put your application at risk (Query injection, code manipulation, port spoofing, etc.).
When can we use the MEAN Stack?
If you’re building a JavaScript application, particularly in Node.js, then you should give MEAN serious consideration.
Even if you’re building a high-throughput API, a simple web application, or a microservice, MEAN is the ideal stack for building Node.js applications.
Before we close up the article it is important to have a peek at the MERN stack.
What is the MERN Stack?
Like MEAN, the MERN stack is also a popular technology stack for web development. The only thing separating these two technology stacks is the front-end technologies i.e. Angular for MEAN Stack and React for MERN Stack.
MEAN stack is used when high-level projects need to be executed and MERN stack is used when there is a need to provide a quick response in a dynamic web application. The choice again depends on the project complexity.
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Conclusion
If you have an enterprise-level application, you should approach MEAN stack technology. And how about this! We are an enterprise with a MEAN stack developer’s team. Seems like a win-win situation.