Application modernization refers to the process of updating and transforming traditional applications to make them more scalable, resilient, and efficient. This involves adopting a microservices architecture, deploying on container infrastructure, and utilizing distributed SQL as the transactional data layer. Distributed SQL has gained significant traction in recent years, following the trends of microservices and containerization, and offers key benefits such as resilience, scalability, data governance, and ease of management. By understanding these fundamental primitives, developers can modernize their applications and take advantage of the latest technologies to increase agility, reduce risk, and improve ROI.