Distributed Authentication using Reactive Programming in Scala

Modern enterprise identity systems often rely on other systems to perform basic functions such as authenticating a user. Relying on a local database, LDAP system or even a partner system across the Internet means that when those systems become unresponsive, it can have rippling and far-reaching performance impacts across the fabric of your application. We will explore how the use of asynchronous non-blocking or Reactive techniques can overcome such challenges and minimize the impact of downstream service degradation. Specifically, we will compare and contrast a Scala based implementation using Reactive support in the Play framework with a ThreadPool based Java approach to distributed authentication. Comparing the approaches across various dimensions such as throughput, latency and code complexity, will show how the Play framework makes it easy to create an elegant high performance solution. Finally, we look at how Reactive architectures can be applied to a multi-tenanted system allowing us to smooth out resource consumption in a shared environment.