What are the challenges faced while converting a traditional blocking application to a non-blocking reactive application using WebFlux in Spring Boot?

Converting a traditional blocking application to a non-blocking reactive application using WebFlux in Spring Boot comes with several challenges. These challenges include managing backpressure to prevent data overflow, understanding reactive operators to compose and transform data streams effectively, and adapting to the asynchronous nature of reactive programming. It is not necessary or practical to eliminate all database calls and replace them with external REST API calls when transitioning to reactive programming. Ensuring strict blocking behavior contradicts the non-blocking nature of WebFlux. Replacing all reactive components with traditional blocking components would defeat the purpose of adopting reactive programming.