New Java Framework Helidon Nima Changes the Game in Microservices

New Framework for Java Gains Popularity: Helidon Nima Challenges Spring Boot

The Java ecosystem continues to surprise. In 2024, the Helidon Nima framework, developed by Oracle, is showing explosive growth in popularity. Over the past six months, Maven Central downloads for this project have increased by 340%, and the developer community on GitHub has grown to over 3,000 active contributors. What has attracted the Java community's attention to Helidon Nima, and why is it being called the "Spring Boot killer"?

What is Helidon Nima?

Helidon is a set of libraries for creating microservices in Java, launched by Oracle in 2020. However, the Nima (short for "Non-blocking I/O Microservices Architecture") version, released in late 2023, became a real breakthrough. Unlike classic Spring Boot, which uses blocking I/O and requires a separate server (Tomcat, Jetty), Helidon Nima is built on virtual threads (Project Loom) — a new feature of Java 21.

Why are developers switching to Nima?

• Performance: Virtual threads allow handling millions of concurrent requests without creating thousands of native threads. Tests show that Helidon Nima is 2-3 times faster than Spring Boot under high load.
• Simplicity: Developing microservices on Nima resembles regular synchronous code, but retains the benefits of reactivity. No complex constructs with CompletableFuture or RxJava — you write as in classic Java, and get asynchrony "out of the box".
• Lightweight: The finished JAR file takes up only 5-8 MB (compared to 50+ MB for Spring Boot), and the application starts in 0.3 seconds.
• Built-in GraalVM support: Nima can be compiled into a native image, providing startup times in milliseconds and minimal memory consumption — ideal for serverless and Kubernetes.

Key Features of Helidon Nima 4.0

• Nima WebServer: Built-in web server based on virtual threads — no external containers required.
• Nima Reactive: Fully non-blocking stack for working with databases, HTTP clients, and message queues.
• Nima Security: Flexible authentication and authorization system with support for JWT, OAuth2, and OpenID Connect.
• Nima Metrics & Tracing: Integration with Micrometer and OpenTelemetry for production monitoring.

Code Example: Hello World on Helidon Nima

Here is what a simple microservice looks like:

import io.helidon.webserver.Routing;import io.helidon.webserver.WebServer;

public class Main {    public static void main(String[] args) {        WebServer.builder()                .routing(Routing.builder()                        .get("/hello", (req, res) -> res.send("Helidon Nima is working!"))                        .build())                .port(8080)                .build()                .start();    }}

For comparison: a similar service on Spring Boot requires 6 lines of configuration, annotations, and a separate class with @SpringBootApplication. Nima uses pure Java code without magic.

When should you choose Helidon Nima?

• You are building high-load microservices with low latency requirements.