How Azul and Moderne Are Boosting Java Developer Productivity
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<p><em>Code Inventory, a feature of Azul Intelligence Cloud, accurately identifies unused and dead code using production Java runtime data across your enterprise’s Java estate. OpenRewrite, Moderne’s open-source project, automates actual source code remediations.</em> <em>The</em> <em>Moderne Platform runs OpenRewrite recipes at scale and enables enterprise-wide code collaboration that significantly reduces the time for code refactoring. The two companies have established a technical partnership to help Java development teams identify, remove and refactor unused and dead code to improve Java developer productivity and dramatically accelerate modernization initiatives.</em> </p><p>An enterprise that acquires another company may have millions of lines of new code. Upgrading to a newer version of Java or modernizing Java applications also leaves unused and dead code, and DevOps teams must decide which code to keep and which to remove. Removing unused and dead code could take months or years – if it ever gets done. </p><p>Fortunately, <a href="https://www.azul.com/products/components/code-inventory/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Code Inventory</a>, a feature of <a href="https://www.azul.com/products/intelligence-cloud/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Azul Intelligence Cloud</a>, can help identify unused and dead code by precisely detailing what custom and third-party code actually runs. Identifying and removing code that never runs can improve Java developer productivity and improve innovation. </p><div class="code-block code-block-12 ai-track" data-ai="WzEyLCIiLCJCbG9jayAxMiIsIiIsMV0=" style="margin: 8px 0; clear: both;"> <style> .ai-rotate {position: relative;} .ai-rotate-hidden {visibility: hidden;} .ai-rotate-hidden-2 {position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;} .ai-list-data, .ai-ip-data, .ai-filter-check, .ai-fallback, .ai-list-block, .ai-list-block-ip, .ai-list-block-filter {visibility: hidden; position: absolute; width: 50%; height: 1px; top: -1000px; z-index: -9999; margin: 0px!important;} .ai-list-data, .ai-ip-data, .ai-filter-check, .ai-fallback {min-width: 1px;} </style> <div class="ai-rotate ai-unprocessed ai-timed-rotation ai-12-1" data-info="WyIxMi0xIiwyXQ==" style="position: relative;"> <div class="ai-rotate-option" style="visibility: hidden;" data-index="1" data-name="VGVjaHN0cm9uZyBHYW5nIFlvdXR1YmU=" data-time="MTA="> <div class="custom-ad"> <div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;"><a href="https://youtu.be/Fojn5NFwaw8" target="_blank"><img src="https://securityboulevard.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Techstrong-Gang-Youtube-PodcastV2-770.png" alt="Techstrong Gang Youtube"></a></div> <div class="clear-custom-ad"></div> </div></div> <div class="ai-rotate-option" style="visibility: hidden; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;" data-index="1" data-name="QVdTIEh1Yg==" data-time="MTA="> <div class="custom-ad"> <div style="margin: auto; text-align: center;"><a href="https://devops.com/builder-community-hub/?ref=in-article-ad-1&utm_source=do&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=in-article-ad-1" target="_blank"><img src="https://devops.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Gradient-1.png" alt="AWS Hub"></a></div> <div class="clear-custom-ad"></div> </div></div> </div> </div><p>But then what? Code Inventory identifies unused and dead code, but it doesn’t act on it. </p><p>That’s where OpenRewrite and Moderne come in. <a href="https://www.moderne.ai/community" rel="noreferrer noopener">OpenRewrite</a>, Moderne’s open-source project and ecosystem, offers semantic analysis and automated refactoring of code using search and transformation recipes. The Moderne Platform provides an OpenRewrite recipe that acts in two phases to remove unused and dead code that Code Inventory has identified. </p><div class="code-block code-block-15" style="margin: 8px 0; clear: both;"> <script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-2091799172090865" crossorigin="anonymous" type="7f4fc7c343e5f7f403bd2781-text/javascript"></script> <!-- SB In Article Ad 1 --> <ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-2091799172090865" data-ad-slot="8723094367" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins> <script type="7f4fc7c343e5f7f403bd2781-text/javascript"> (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); </script></div><p>Moderne was founded with a singular mission — do the work for software developers that is often the most tedious, time-consuming, and neglected. And solve this problem at the scale needed to improve business productivity across the enterprise.</p><figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-vimeo wp-block-embed-vimeo wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"> <div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper"> <iframe title="Boosting Engineering Productivity and Sustainability with Azul’s Erik Costlow - EcoTech Insights" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/1089101083?dnt=1&app_id=122963" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen; picture-in-picture; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; web-share"></iframe> </div> </figure><p>Azul Senior Director of Cloud Solutions Erik Costlow explains Azul Vulnerability Detection. Source: <a href="https://techstrong.tv/videos/ecotech-insights/boosting-engineering-productivity-and-sustainability-with-azuls-erik-costlow-ecotech-insights" rel="noreferrer noopener">Techstrong TV</a></p><h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-this-integration-is-important-nbsp">Why this integration is important </h2><p>According to <a href="https://www.azul.com/state-of-java-2025/" rel="noreferrer noopener">Azul’s 2025 State of Java Survey & Report</a>, 62% of survey participants say unused or dead code affects Java developer productivity. To address this, Azul and Moderne have integrated their solutions to bridge runtime insight with automated code remediation. </p><p>Decreasing an application’s complexity by identifying and deprecating unused code can improve Java developer productivity. Many large companies have applications where 50% of custom code isn’t used anymore. When developers work on these apps, they increase the cognitive load and spend more time in pipelines running tests without creating value. </p><p>Many organizations are seeking to upgrade and modernize their applications to keep them secure and on supported frameworks and runtimes, but legacy Java codebases can contain unused and dead code, third-party libraries and open-source components. Over time teams have added features but not retired old code, making Java maintenance and modernization more difficult and costly. </p><p>Application maintenance is an essential part of keeping applications secure and running. By providing developers with a solution for remediating unused or dead code that is 100% accurate based on production application runtime data, Java teams can focus on migrating and modernizing only the application code that matters. </p><h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-setup-nbsp">The setup </h2><p>This integration works with a sample application, Spring PetClinic, with some new code for a pet pharmacy. It’s a cool feature, but it never took off. After years of working on PetClinic it has gotten large and unpleasant to work on. </p><p>The Intelligence Cloud agent has already spent significant time monitoring the application in production. The agent is on each node, each pod, and each VM. The demo has two phases, <strong>deprecation</strong> and <strong>removal</strong>. </p><h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-phase-one-deprecation-nbsp">Phase one – deprecation </h2><p>OpenRewrite works in the code repository of your choice, in this case GitHub. OpenRewrite sees code that Code Inventory marked as deprecated and annotates the code. This doesn’t change the functionality, but next time you’re in the code, it clearly marks the code as deprecated. The second part is that we collect this information over time. </p><p>The OpenRewrite instance is connected to the application’s repository. Copy a few parameters from Azul to start the connection, mainly the Azul Intelligence Cloud host URL and API key, and you’re off and running.</p><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="1024" height="640" src="https://azul.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/Moderne-Moderne-1024x640.png?auto=format&crop=faces,entropy&fit=max&q=80&s=0940fd7483e6fd9f609506a50e58016c" alt="SCREENSHOT - Connect the OpenRewrite instance to the application's repository and copy a few parameters from Azul." class="wp-image-83891"></figure><figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="640" src="https://azul.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/Moderne-Azul-1024x640.png?auto=format&crop=faces,entropy&fit=max&q=80&s=2a8e6efc5edeb99878dff40d270747a1" alt="" class="wp-image-83897"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Connect the OpenRewrite instance to the application’s repository and copy a few parameters from Azul.</figcaption></figure><p>Several OpenRewrite recipes have already run. A recipe is a set of refactoring and code transformation operations that can be applied to a codebase to achieve specific goals, such as code modernization.</p><h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-phase-two-removal-nbsp">Phase two – removal </h2><p>This step is the next sign that the code is intended for removal. It isn’t necessary for small teams but can help larger teams. Again, it doesn’t affect functionality of the app; it’s a communication method. </p><p>Removal is broken into two steps for safety: </p><ul class="wp-block-list"> <li>The first removal phase features removal of references to the code. This helps you find unit tests or things where removing the code would cause breakage. </li> <li>The second removal phase would include finally removing the code. </li> </ul><p>At any point in the process, if code deprecated for removal is used, the annotation is removed. It’s not safe to remove code that is used. Over time, Code Inventory will continue to monitor source code in production, giving OpenRewrite and its operators the best information to use when removing unused and dead code. </p><h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-learn-more-about-azul-and-moderne-nbsp">Learn more about Azul and Moderne </h2><p>The technical collaboration and product integration brings together Azul’s expertise in Java and runtime intelligence and Moderne’s knowledge of rules-based refactoring systems to automate the work of securing, maintaining and modernizing codebases at the scale of 10s of millions of lines of code. The partnership includes the integration of Code Inventory, a feature of Azul Intelligence Cloud, Azul’s cloud analytics solution which provides actionable intelligence from production Java runtime data, and the Moderne platform which provides actual source code remediations. </p><p>Developers can now automatically detect dead and unused code, deprecate it directly in source files, and remove it over time, making codebases cleaner and easier to maintain. The integration of these two solutions can save enterprise development teams hundreds of man-months of manual work updating source code and fixing vulnerabilities as part of major Java upgrades and framework migrations.</p><figure class="wp-block-table"> <table class="has-fixed-layout"> <thead> <tr> <th><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Learn More</mark></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td><a href="https://www.azul.com/newsroom/azul-and-moderne-announce-partnership-to-boost-java-developer-productivity/">Read the Moderne integration announcement</a><br><a href="https://www.azul.com/partner-directory/moderne/">Visit the Moderne partner page</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </figure><p>Learn more about the technical partnership between Azul and Moderne.</p><p>The post <a href="https://www.azul.com/blog/how-azul-and-moderne-are-boosting-java-developer-productivity/">How Azul and Moderne Are Boosting Java Developer Productivity</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.azul.com/">Azul | Better Java Performance, Superior Java Support</a>.</p><div class="spu-placeholder" style="display:none"></div><p class="syndicated-attribution">*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from <a href="https://www.azul.com/category/security/">Security Blog Posts - Azul</a> authored by <a href="https://securityboulevard.com/author/0/" title="Read other posts by Azul">Azul</a>. Read the original post at: <a href="https://www.azul.com/blog/how-azul-and-moderne-are-boosting-java-developer-productivity/">https://www.azul.com/blog/how-azul-and-moderne-are-boosting-java-developer-productivity/</a> </p>