What is PEAN Stack?

The terms MEAN, MERN, LAMP, PERN, etc are often encountered while using the internet. These are web stacks consisting of a bundle of software and frameworks or libraries which are used for building full-stack web apps. A stack usually consists of a database, server-side and client-side technologies, a web server, a particular Operating system. Sometimes back-end technologies are cross-platform hence no particular OS.

PEAN STACK

PEAN is a web application stack consisting of PostgreSQL, Express framework, NodeJS, and AngularJS as a frontend framework. It has the following features:

• It is open-source and easy to learn as JavaScript is involved in both segments of development(Client Side and Server Side).
• It is not as popular as MEAN or MERN though yes is used when data integrity and consistency is significant for a company as it has PostgreSQL which is an SQL-based database and hence is more organized and structured than NoSQL.

Components Of PEAN STACK:

Let us have a look at the components of the PEAN stack in detail.

1. P stand for PostgreSQL: PostgreSQL has the following features:

• A SQL-based database management system that can be used to store, manage, and manipulate data.
• Stores data in tabular form in rows and columns and is also ACID-complaint and transactional.
• As an SQL-based database, it is more suited for storing the most complex workloads.
• It is a better choice than NoSQL if complex transactions are in concern.

Why use PostgreSQL?

• Protects data integrity and maintains consistency.
• Has fault-tolerant environment.
• It is free and open-source.
• It is also available in multiple languages.
• It is highly extensible.
• It has a robust access control system.

2. E stands for ExpressJS: The ExpressJS has the following features-

• A server-side framework based on NodeJS helps in routing and managing client requests to the server and responses.
• It is used for building web applications and also APIs.

Why use ExpressJS?

• Makes backend coding simple and easy.
• Supports many middlewares.
• Minimal and flexible web application framework.
• Robust set of features for both web and mobile applications.
• Creating efficient and robust API is quick and easy with ExpressJS.

3. N stands for NodeJS: NodeJS has the following features-

• A server-side technology that runs on a V8 engine(also used in Chrome browser).
• It helps us run JavaScript outside the browser and build web and network apps.
• Node helps in setting up a web server.
• It runs on many platforms and is free and open-source.
• It is used to build fast and scalable network applications.

Why use NodeJS?

• Highly scalable.
• Highly extensible.
• Provides event-driven asynchronous features which makes it lightweight.
• No buffering hence is fast.
• Provides caching.
• Contains a vast number of libraries.
• It handles thousands of concurrent connections with a single server.

4. A stands for AngularJS: AngularJS has the following features-

• A frontend JavaScript framework that lets you extend HTML.
• It binds data to HTML.
• It is open-source and mainly used for developing single-page applications(SPAs).

Why use AngularJS?

• It is easy to use.
• Converts static HTML to dynamic HTML.
• It has ready-to-use templates.
• It is time-saving.
• MVC architecture.
• Another benefit of Angular is Dependency injection.

Advantages of PEAN:

• The biggest advantage of PEAN is that JavaScript is used on all levels of development which simplifies and makes the process speedy and efficient.
• It is platform-independent and open-source.
• For applications that involve complex transactions of data, SQL is a better fit as it maintains data integrity and consistency with integrity constraints.

Disadvantages of PEAN:

• NoSQL is considered a more scalable database than SQL.
• Postgre as an SQL-based is less flexible than MongoDB(NoSQL).