Microservices

image courtesy: xenonstack

Microservices have become a new thing that most software companies have come to adopt in recent years. Most companies have shifted from the old way of things which is the monolithic approach. 

What is Microservice? 

Separation of concerns should be the other name for microservices. As the name goes this is an architectural pattern where various parts of an application are built separately and hosted separately to perform a specific purpose for the application but is still connected to each other.  

 

Benefits of Microservices over Monolithic  

Language flexibility: In a microservice architecture a variety of languages can be used in building an application, depending on what the team or programmer thinks is best suited for building that service. Unlike in a monolithic setting which does not give chance for flexibility as the language stack has to be defined at the start of the project. 

 

Scaling: Each service can be scaled independently according to business demands, whereas in a monolithic application the whole application will need to be scaled and if it wasn’t built properly from the ground up for scaling due to the language used or the code structure this could become a bottle neck to the team. 

 

Smaller teams: smaller teams with a specific focus and expertise can be created to work on a particular service. Based on the small size of the team, communication is faster and onboarding new members can be easy unlike onboarding new members to a larger team working on a monolithic application, a lot more time will be needed in understanding how the whole application works and this can decrease productivity. 

Separation of concern: In a monolithic application, code basis tends to get overly complicated over time. Adding new functionality can become difficult without breaking things. In a microservice architecture, code basis is smaller and easier to understand and contribute to. Making updates or carrying out maintenance on a monolithic application means the whole application will be affected during the process, whereas on the service been worked on in a microservice environment will be affected while other service still functions properly. 

 

Microservices architecture has really created a lot more flexibility in the way modern software applications is built. And this architectural pattern, i believe will be the standard of building most software applications for years to come. If you feel there are disadvantages to this architectural pattern, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comment section. For now, if you want to know more about microservices feel free to follow this link.