Meet Chicory, exploit the power of WebAssembly on the server side! by Andrea Peruffo

WebAssembly (WASM) is a standardized binary format designed to be embedded in other languages and runtimes, offering sandboxed execution and memory control

Chicory is a pure Java runtime for WebAssembly that allows executing WASM modules within Java applications without external dependencies

Key benefits of WebAssembly include:

• Sandbox execution with controlled capabilities
• Granular memory control
• Cross-language compatibility
• Performance optimization potential
• Standardized W3C specification

WASM modules can be written in various languages (Go, Rust, C) and compiled to WebAssembly for use in Java applications

Common use cases for server-side WebAssembly:

• Custom authorization rules
• Function-as-a-Service implementations
• Application extensions
• CLI tool integration
• Native code transformations

WebAssembly provides bi-directional function calls:

• Host language can call WASM functions
• WASM can call imported host functions

Security features include:

• No direct file system access
• Controlled memory allocation
• Thread interruption capability
• Timeout implementation
• Resource usage limitations

Applications can be made extensible through WASM modules that are:

• Secure
• Small in size
• Language-agnostic
• Easy to update and deploy

WebAssembly is already widely used in browser-based applications (Google Maps, Excel, Word) and is gaining traction in server-side implementations