Transition Rationale
- Patricia DeStefano
The transition from Okapi to Eureka is driven by the need for improved performance, scalability, maintainability, security, and system management. Okapi's centralized architecture often becomes a bottleneck as workloads expand, particularly in large-scale environments such as consortia and national libraries. In contrast, Eureka’s decentralized approach efficiently distributes workloads, allowing individual modules to scale independently. Eureka uses Keycloak for authorization and authentication and offers a more reliable and user-friendly role-based access mechanism which also greatly improves security. Additionally, system management is simplified by moving away from Okapi’s monolithic control over module communication. Eureka’s use of sidecars at the module level streamlines deployments, making upgrades and maintenance more manageable.
Eureka's dependence on open-source technologies like Keycloak, Kong, and Quarkus ensures long-term flexibility, interoperability, and sustainability. By adopting trusted open-source software like Kong and Keycloak, FOLIO can focus its development effort on library business logic, leaving the API gateway and security code to the experts. Unlike Okapi, which depends on custom-built components, Eureka aligns with evolving industry standards.
Overall, transitioning to Eureka enhances efficiency, security, and scalability within the FOLIO ecosystem. Through the use of contemporary technology and a modular design, Eureka enables libraries to grow and adapt while maintaining high-performance operations with minimal complexity.