What Is a Tech Stack?

A tech stack is a combination of all the frameworks, language tools, and software used to create and run a particular application. It’s also known as a solutions stack or data ecosystem.

What’s Included In A Tech Stack?

Each tool in your stack is used to create, analyze, or take-in data. There are several components that compile an entire tech stack. For example, developers will use:

Web stack

Developers use this combination of software to build web applications. An example is LAMP, which uses the operating system Linux, the webs erver Apache, the relational database management system MySQL, and the object-oriented scripting language PHP.

Application stack

This comprises closely related applications that perform tasks for an organization. An application stack for a small business could include spreadsheets, word processing, email utilities, and databases.

Front-end development stack

This stack is used to create the client-side for websites and applications. A commonly used stack for front-end development includes HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CSS preprocessors, and UI frameworks.

Back-end development stack

This one’s a combination of software and frameworks to build the server-side for websites and applications. Popular back-end development stacks comprise PHP, Ruby, and Python.

And together, the coding frameworks and languages like JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP, and Python would create an entire tech stack. Though there are a number of components within a tech stack, in order to run most efficiently, each data source attributed to the tech stack must link to one another.

How To Build Your Tech Stack

Organizations need to build their tech stack based on their needs and predicted growth. The characteristics that create a robust tech stack include:

Scalability

This determines if the technology stack you’ve used to build your application can withstand the load of exponentially more users.

Resources

The tech stack you use should have subject-matter experts and resources you can use if you hit roadblocks or experience issues.

Maintenance

Any application or website you build will need to be maintained. It’s best to ensure that the tech stack you use minimizes maintenance costs and downtime for your application.

Security

A good tech stack has cyber-security frameworks to ensure that your website or application has a robust defense system to prevent data breaches and fraud.

Speed

The right tech stack won’t need you to compromise on performance. It’s imperative that the tech stack you use speeds up project development.

Many organizations have been building on their tech stack for years, and are just now realizing how convoluted the process can become with too many components -- developers can’t manage a technology stack unless they have transparency into all parts of the system.

Luckily, as technology has evolved, enterprises have the opportunity to start streamlining the tools they utilize, for powerful insights that can benefit the entire organization, through a single pane of glass.

Looking to streamline your tech stack? Learn how Scuba can give you 360-degree visibility into your data quickly, and easily.