computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...

, a solution stack or software stack is a set of

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

subsystems or components needed to create a complete

platform Platform may refer to: Technology * Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run * Platform game, a genre of video games * Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models * Weapons platform, a system or ...

such that no additional software is needed to support applications. Applications are said to "run on" or "run on top of" the resulting platform. For example, to develop a

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

, the architect defines the stack as the target

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

, web server,

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases s ...

, and

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

. Another version of a software stack is operating system,

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement c ...

, database, and applications. Regularly, the components of a software stack are developed by different developers independently from one another. Some components/subsystems of an overall system are chosen together often enough that the particular set is referred to by a name representing the whole, rather than by naming the parts. Typically, the name is an

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

representing the individual components. The term "solution stack" has, historically, occasionally included hardware components as part of a final product, mixing both the hardware and software in layers of support. A full-stack developer is expected to be able to work in all the layers of the stack. A full-stack web developer can be defined by some as a developer or engineer who works with both the front and back ends of a website or application. This means they can lead platform builds that involve databases, user-facing websites, and working with clients during the planning phase of projects.

Examples

; BCHS : OpenBSD (operating system) : C (programming language) :

httpd HTTPd is a software program that usually runs in the background, as a process, and plays the role of a server in a client–server model using the HTTP and/or HTTPS network protocol(s). The process waits for the incoming client requests and for ...

(web server) :

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the m ...

(database) ; ELK :

Elasticsearch Elasticsearch is a search engine based on the Lucene library. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch is developed in Java and is dual ...

( search engine) :

Logstash Elasticsearch is a search engine based on the Lucene library. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable full-text search engine with an HTTP web interface and schema-free JSON documents. Elasticsearch is developed in Java and is dual- ...

(event and

log management Log management (LM) comprises an approach to dealing with large volumes of computer-generated log messages (also known as audit records, audit trails, event-logs, etc.). Log management generally covers: * Log collection * Centralized log agg ...

tool) :

Kibana Kibana is a source-available data visualization dashboard software for Elasticsearch, whose free and open source successor in OpenSearch is OpenSearch Dashboards. History It provides visualization capabilities on top of the content indexed ...

( data visualization) ; Ganeti : Xen or KVM (

hypervisor A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

) :

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

with LVM (mass-storage device management) :

Distributed Replicated Block Device DRBD is a distributed replicated storage system for the Linux platform. It is implemented as a kernel driver, several userspace management applications, and some shell scripts. DRBD is traditionally used in high availability (HA) computer clu ...

(storage replication) :

Ganeti Ganeti is a virtual machine cluster management tool originally developed by Google. The solution stack uses either Xen, KVM, or LXC as the virtualization platform, LVM for disk management, and optionally DRBD for disk replication across physica ...

(

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized h ...

cluster management Within cluster and parallel computing, a cluster manager is usually backend graphical user interface (GUI) or command-line interface (CLI) software that runs on a set of cluster nodes that it manages (in some cases it runs on a different server or ...

tool) : Ganeti Web Manager (web interface) ; GLASS : GemStone (database and application server) :

(operating system) : Apache (web server) : Smalltalk (programming language) : Seaside (web framework) ; GRANDstack :

GraphQL GraphQL is an open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs, and a runtime for fulfilling queries with existing data. GraphQL was developed internally by Facebook (now Meta) in 2012 before being publicly released in 2015. On 7 No ...

(data query and manipulation language) :

React REACT or React may refer to: Science and technology *REACT (telescope), a telescope at Fenton Hill Observatory, New Mexico, US Computing * React (JavaScript library) , a JavaScript library for building user interfaces, from Facebook ** React Nati ...

(web application presentation) :

Apollo Apollo, grc, Ἀπόλλωνος, Apóllōnos, label=genitive , ; , grc-dor, Ἀπέλλων, Apéllōn, ; grc, Ἀπείλων, Apeílōn, label= Arcadocypriot Greek, ; grc-aeo, Ἄπλουν, Áploun, la, Apollō, la, Apollinis, label ...

(Data Graph Platform) :

Neo4j Neo4j is a graph database management system developed by Neo4j, Inc. Described by its developers as an ACID-compliant transactional database with native graph storage and processing, Neo4j is available in a non-open-source "community edition" ...

( database management systems) ; Jamstack :

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

(programming language) : APIs (Application programming interfaces) : Markup (content) ;

LAMP Lamp, Lamps or LAMP may refer to: Lighting * Oil lamp, using an oil-based fuel source * Kerosene lamp, using kerosene as a fuel * Electric lamp, or light bulb, a replaceable component that produces light from electricity * Light fixture, or li ...

(operating system) : Apache (web server) :

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ori ...

( database management systems) :

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group. ...

, or

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

(

scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting ...

s) ; LAPP :

(operating system) : Apache (web server) : PostgreSQL (database management systems) :

, or

(scripting languages) ; LEAP :

(operating system) :

Eucalyptus ''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as e ...

(free and open-source alternative to the

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment o ...

) : AppScale (

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...

-framework and free and open-source alternative to

Google App Engine Google App Engine (often referred to as GAE or simply App Engine) is a cloud computing platform as a service for developing and hosting web applications in Google-managed data centers. Applications are sandboxed and run across multiple server ...

) :

(programming language) ; LEMP/LNMP :

(operating system) :

Nginx Nginx (pronounced "engine x" ) is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 2004. Nginx is free and open-source software ...

(web server) :

(database management systems) :

, or

(scripting languages) ; LLMP :

(operating system) :

Lighttpd lighttpd (pronounced "lighty") is an open-source web server optimized for speed-critical environments while remaining standards-compliant, secure and flexible. It was originally written by Jan Kneschke as a proof-of-concept of the c10k problem � ...

(web server) :

(database management systems) :

, or

(scripting languages) ; LYME and LYCE :

(operating system) :

Yaws Yaws is a tropical infection of the skin, bones, and joints caused by the spirochete bacterium ''Treponema pallidum pertenue''. The disease begins with a round, hard swelling of the skin, in diameter. The center may break open and form an ulce ...

(web server, written in Erlang) : Mnesia or

CouchDB Apache CouchDB is an open-source document-oriented NoSQL database, implemented in Erlang. CouchDB uses multiple formats and protocols to store, transfer, and process its data. It uses JSON to store data, JavaScript as its query language using ...

(database, written in Erlang) : Erlang (functional programming language) ;

MAMP MAMP is a solution stack composed of free and open-source and proprietary commercial software used together to develop and run dynamic websites on Apple Macintosh computers. Specifications and uses The name ''MAMP'' is an acronym that stems ...

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

(operating system) : Apache (web server) :

(database) :

, or

(programming languages) ; MARQS :

Apache Mesos Apache Mesos is an open-source project to manage computer clusters. It was developed at the University of California, Berkeley. History Mesos began as a research project in the UC Berkeley RAD Lab by then PhD students Benjamin Hindman, Andy Ko ...

(node startup/shutdown) :

Akka (toolkit) Akka is a source-available toolkit and runtime simplifying the construction of concurrent and distributed applications on the JVM. Akka supports multiple programming models for concurrency, but it emphasizes actor-based concurrency, with inspir ...

(actor implementation) :

Riak Riak (pronounced "ree-ack" ) is a distributed NoSQL key-value data store based on Amazon's Dynamo paper, including its "tunable AP" approach, that is tunable consistency, to the tradeoffs imposed by the CAP Theorem. Riak offers high availability, ...

(data store) : Apache Kafka (messaging) : Apache Spark (big data and MapReduce) ;

MEAN There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ari ...

MongoDB MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL database program, MongoDB uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas. MongoDB is developed by MongoDB Inc. and licensed under the Ser ...

(database) : Express.js (application controller layer) : AngularJS/ Angular (web application presentation) :

Node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript code o ...

(JavaScript runtime) ; MERN :

(database) : Express.js (application controller layer) : React.js (web application presentation) :

(JavaScript runtime) ; MEVN :

(database) : Express.js (application controller layer) :

Vue.js Vue.js (commonly referred to as Vue; pronounced "view") is an open-source model–view–viewmodel front end JavaScript framework for building user interfaces and single-page applications. It was created by Evan You, and is maintained by him ...

(web application presentation) :

(JavaScript runtime) ; MLVN :

(database) :

(operating system) : Varnish (software) (frontend cache) :

(JavaScript runtime) ; NMP :

(web server) :

(database) :

(programming language) ;

OpenACS The ArsDigita Community System (ACS) was an open source toolkit for developing community web applications developed primarily by developers associated with ArsDigita Corporation. It was licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, and is one of the mos ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

(operating system) : NaviServer (web server) :

(

web application framework A web framework (WF) or web application framework (WAF) is a software framework that is designed to support the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build an ...

) : PostgreSQL or Oracle Database (database) :

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

(scripting language) ;

PERN ''Dragonriders of Pern'' is a science fantasy series written primarily by American author Anne McCaffrey, who initiated it in 1967. Beginning in 2003, her middle child Todd McCaffrey has written Pern novels, both solo and jointly with Anne. ...

: PostgreSQL (database) : Express.js (application controller layer) :

React (JavaScript library) React (also known as React.js or ReactJS) is a free and open-source front-end JavaScript library for building user interfaces based on UI components. It is maintained by Meta (formerly Facebook) and a community of individual developers and co ...

(web application presentation) :

(JavaScript runtime) ; PLONK :

Prometheus In Greek mythology, Prometheus (; , , possibly meaning " forethought")Smith"Prometheus". is a Titan god of fire. Prometheus is best known for defying the gods by stealing fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technology, kn ...

(metrics and time-series) :

Linkerd The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is a Linux Foundation project that was founded in 2015 to help advance container technology and align the tech industry around its evolution. It was announced alongside Kubernetes 1.0, an open sour ...

(service mesh) : OpenFaaS (management and auto-scaling of compute) : NATS (asynchronous message bus/queue) :

Kubernetes Kubernetes (, commonly stylized as K8s) is an open-source container orchestration system for automating software deployment, scaling, and management. Google originally designed Kubernetes, but the Cloud Native Computing Foundation now maintains ...

(declarative, extensible, scale-out, self-healing clustering) ; SMACK : Apache Spark (big data and MapReduce) :

(

node In general, a node is a localized swelling (a "knot") or a point of intersection (a vertex). Node may refer to: In mathematics * Vertex (graph theory), a vertex in a mathematical graph *Vertex (geometry), a point where two or more curves, lines ...

startup/shutdown) :

(

actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek term is (), li ...

implementation) :

Apache Cassandra Cassandra is a free and open-source, distributed, wide-column store, NoSQL database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers, providing high availability with no single point of failure. Cassand ...

(database) : Apache Kafka (

messaging A message is a discrete unit of communication intended by the source for consumption by some recipient or group of recipients. A message may be delivered by various means, including courier, telegraphy, carrier pigeon and electronic bus. ...

) ; T-REx :

TerminusDB TerminusDB is an open source knowledge graph and Document-oriented database, document store. It is used to build versioned data products. It is a Native (computing), native Version control, revision control database that is architecturally simil ...

(scalable

graph database A graph database (GDB) is a database that uses graph structures for semantic queries with nodes, edges, and properties to represent and store data. A key concept of the system is the '' graph'' (or ''edge'' or ''relationship''). The graph rel ...

) :

(

web framework) : Express.js (framework for

) ;

WAMP LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python) is an acronym denoting one of the most common Software stack, software stacks for many of the web's most popular web application, applications. However, LAMP now refers to a generic software stack mode ...

(operating system) : Apache (web server) :

(database) :

, or

(programming language) ;

WIMP Wimp, WIMP, or Wimps may refer to: Science and technology * Weakly interacting massive particle, a hypothetical particle of dark matter * WIMP (computing), the "window, icon, menu, pointer" paradigm * WIMP (software bundle), the web stack of Wind ...

(operating system) :

Internet Information Services Internet Information Services (IIS-pronounced 2S, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server software created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and NN ...

(web server) :

(database) :

, or

(programming language) ; WINS :

Windows Server Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a group of operating systems (OS) for servers that Microsoft has been developing since July 27, 1993. The first OS that was released for this platform was Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server. With the r ...

(operating system) :

(web server) : .NET ( software framework) : SQL Server (database) ; WISA :

(operating system) :

(web server) : SQL Server (database) :

ASP.NET ASP.NET is an open-source, server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name s ...

(web framework) ; WISAV/WIPAV :

(operating system) :

(web server) :

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...

/ PostgreSQL (database) :

(backend web framework) :

(frontend web framework) ;

XAMPP XAMPP ( or ) is a free and open-source cross-platform web server solution stack package developed by Apache Friends, consisting mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl prog ...

cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...

(operating system) : Apache (web server) :

(database) :

(programming language) :

(programming language) ; XRX :

XML database An XML database is a data persistence software system that allows data to be specified, and sometimes stored, in XML format. This data can be queried, transformed, exported and returned to a calling system. XML databases are a flavor of document ...

(database such as

BaseX BaseX is a native and light-weight XML database management system and XQuery processor, developed as a community project on GitHub. It is specialized in storing, querying, and visualizing large XML documents and collections. BaseX is platform-i ...

eXist eXist-db (or eXist for short) is an open source software project for NoSQL databases built on XML technology. It is classified as both a NoSQL document-oriented database system and a native XML database (and it provides support for XML, JSON, ...

MarkLogic Server MarkLogic Server is a document-oriented database developed by MarkLogic. It is a NoSQL multi-model database that evolved from an XML database to natively store JSON documents and RDF triples, the data model for semantics. MarkLogic is designed to ...

) :

XQuery XQuery (XML Query) is a query and functional programming language that queries and transforms collections of structured and unstructured data, usually in the form of XML, text and with vendor-specific extensions for other data formats (JSON, b ...

(Query language) :

REST Rest or REST may refer to: Relief from activity * Sleep ** Bed rest * Kneeling * Lying (position) * Sitting * Squatting position Structural support * Structural support ** Rest (cue sports) ** Armrest ** Headrest ** Footrest Arts and enter ...

(

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuabl ...

interface) :

XForms XForms is an XML format used for collecting inputs from web forms. XForms was designed to be the next generation of HTML / XHTML forms, but is generic enough that it can also be used in a standalone manner or with presentation languages other th ...

(client)

References

{{reflist Software architecture Web frameworks

Examples

See also

References