Evolving from LAMP to MEAN
Key Points
- Jamil Spang, an IBM Cloud developer advocate, introduces the MEAN stack as a modern alternative to the traditional LAMP stack for building full‑stack web applications.
- He breaks down the MEAN acronym: **M**ongoDB as the NoSQL data store, **E**xpress.js as the Node‑based web framework, **A**ngular as the front‑end single‑page‑application library, and **N**ode.js as the underlying runtime platform.
- The talk emphasizes Node.js as the foundational layer, highlighting how Express simplifies routing, API creation, and database connectivity through npm packages.
- Angular is presented as the component that enables rich, client‑side SPA experiences, completing the end‑to‑end JavaScript stack that replaces LAMP’s Apache/PHP/MySQL components.
Full Transcript
# Evolving from LAMP to MEAN **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usqwC2MIho8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usqwC2MIho8) **Duration:** 00:06:48 ## Summary - Jamil Spang, an IBM Cloud developer advocate, introduces the MEAN stack as a modern alternative to the traditional LAMP stack for building full‑stack web applications. - He breaks down the MEAN acronym: **M**ongoDB as the NoSQL data store, **E**xpress.js as the Node‑based web framework, **A**ngular as the front‑end single‑page‑application library, and **N**ode.js as the underlying runtime platform. - The talk emphasizes Node.js as the foundational layer, highlighting how Express simplifies routing, API creation, and database connectivity through npm packages. - Angular is presented as the component that enables rich, client‑side SPA experiences, completing the end‑to‑end JavaScript stack that replaces LAMP’s Apache/PHP/MySQL components. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usqwC2MIho8&t=0s) **From LAMP to MEAN Stack** - Jamil Spang introduces the MEAN stack, explains its components (MongoDB, Express, Angular, Node) and contrasts it with the traditional LAMP architecture. ## Full Transcript
are you a veteran lamp stack developer
looking to somehow evolve to your next
generation platform
if so you're going to love our topic
today hello my name is jamil spang
developer advocate with ibm cloud and
today my topic is going to be concerning
the acronym mean
but it's not going to be meaning that
perspective we're going to be very nice
and code up some great things here
so as usual whenever we get started i
love to break down the acronyms and then
we'll hit the whiteboard and show you
how all these components kind of fit
together so let's break this acronym
down
we have the mean the m
of course
which is going to stand for
db
talking about the main data store that's
a component of that
we have the e which stands for express
express.js we all know it's a web
application framework built on top of
javascript
the a is for angular
all right spa application uh development
there and then as more of the platform
we're gonna go with the n which is no js
and so if you recall from my previous
video on the lamp stack this is more
centered around linux apache php does a
lot of the work of course there's a data
store option there which is my sequel
and now we're going to take this to the
next step with the mean platform and
we'll talk about a couple of variations
that can occur as well
so i'm going to get started by as usual
drawing out things how they are
and we're going to have a couple of
layers here but this is going to be
quite common
that we're going to have so let's think
of it like this let's start with our
foundation here and the first foundation
is going to be
node.js
all right the node.js has quickly grown
over the decades to being quite an
impressive language evolving to not only
a front end with javascript a frontside
scripting language to now even working
on the server side and one of the most
popular packages that most
applications are developed in is let's
see if i can squeeze that in
is the express web application framework
all right it's going to install as a
part of the
node.js
computing language
it will bring up the ability to quickly
let you scale up web applications built
upon that not only can you define your
routes but also it'll be that piece that
kind of can make connections to
the database
all right so we're going to deal with
mongodb here so the express
will have all the modules that are used
to kind of function and run
make connections to the database make
expose other routes as well as connect
to any other
kind of languages that are there it's
all part of the javascript models there
if you're familiar with the mpm package
manager
you can simply import packages
make references to require them inside
of express
routes or or or models there and then
work with everything
so on top of that the last part we'll
talk about is the a which stands for
angular
and this is going to fit in to be what
we like to call our single page
applications so everyone's familiar with
angular
one of the popular frameworks for
building spa applications from google
and what this is going to do is really
take control of the complete front end
that's there spa applications as you
know in comparison to traditional page
applications is really just going to
have that main entry level loading so
maybe that first route and then it only
declaratively
refreshes pages of the
page that you want to um pretty much
that you focus on so one i want to kind
of describe that a little bit more
let's say our web page comes in and it's
with a header
and a menu and then content here so as i
click links
here only this part will
actually refresh as i click links all
right whereas in most traditional page
applications
the whole page would refresh and you
have to constantly deal with loading
times from that so what this does is
pretty much allows you to build in these
modern interfaces and most of the most
modern applications are coming as spa
applications single page applications
there express is the framework that
serves that out when angular needs to
make connections to a database is pretty
much going to talk to the express
framework which will make the connection
to
which will give the response back
and then serve it back to that session
there as well and of course angler is
free to make any other ajax calls as it
needs
now you're probably thinking to yourself
mean okay well what if i don't use
angular what if i use another popular
language which is one that i use a
lot react and so yes you can substitute
different parts here to do different
things all right um
often i've made my acronym
i guess that makes it mern all right the
express react
and um and node.js that's there so you
can often switch out any component that
you are looking to use
that can really fit your scenario here
so that's all for now this is the mean
stack i encourage you to go check it out
it was naturally my next evolution after
i became an expert at building lamp
steps
stacks and then wanted to make my move
into more fluid single page
using mongodb because everything's done
as a document json document everything's
flexible fluid fast to develop and
nothing beats the experience of a single
page application
so that's all for today thank you for
your time happy coding
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