What Is Microservice Architecture?
The dynamic market requires quick actions and application updates without complete redeployment. This challenge pressured developers to ensure continuous delivery and fast responses. Microservices are a huge trend, offering scalability and flexibility. App developers can update and redeploy specific functionalities of the software without redeployment.
Microservice architecture is a specific architectural style for app development. This development method allows the entire application to be divided into deployable services with a defined scope of responsibilities. The software will refer to the various microservices to respond to a user request.
What Is Microservice Architecture?
The application is developed as a collection of services providing a framework that connects them. A microservice is a single service with specialized functions that focuses on completing specific tasks as part of the app’s features. Microservices establish mutual communication through the interfaces to solve problems. This approach was shown to overcome the disadvantages of monolithic architecture.
A monolithic application contains all the software components and has limitations such as unreliability, inflexibility, and slow development. The microservices architecture approach overcomes such disadvantages as each element is independent but can communicate with others. Therefore, the microservice framework is more straightforward and flexible for developing complex software.
Why Are They Called Microservices
The term microservices encapsulates app components that cover a particular aspect and function. For example, they can cover individual operations such as data search and logging. When combined, they form a single application.
The user accesses a user interface to enter the request. The API gateway processes the request and solves the problem through a combination of microservices. Each has individual building, operation, scaling, and deployment, so the functionalities are not shared between the services. The API gateway establishes communication between the components to solve complex problems. Each element also has a dedicated set of skills.
When Are Microservices Used
Microservice architecture makes the app development process quicker and simpler. Developers have complete control over technology, and agile software development shortens the development cycle. Microservices find applications for various tasks, including:
Website Migration
Website migration requires redeveloping significant aspects such as structure, domain, and user interface. Websites hosted on monolithic platforms can be migrated to a microservices platform. This approach reduces migration downtime, ensuring it doesn’t affect your business.
Media Content
With microservice architecture, videos and images can be stored in a system and be easily accessible for mobile or the web. Enterprise applications that handle a billion requests daily will benefit from this. This approach ensures the requests are processed without errors.
Transactions and Invoices
With microservices, the transactions and generating invoices can be two individual functions. If the invoicing system fails, the payment processing won’t be affected. This makes microservices ideal for businesses that handle large volumes of transactions.
Benefits of Microservices
Less Effort
Updating the existing functionalities takes less effort. Small development teams can work on improving different services simultaneously. This streamlines the improvement process and helps identify hot services.
Improved Scalability
Microservices architecture needs less infrastructure than monoliths, thanks to precise scalability. The individual services that make an app can be developed using different technologies and programming languages and are launched independently. Developers can choose the tech stacks, knowing they will work together.
Independent Deployment
Individual microservices that are part of an application must be full stack to be deployed independently. This approach allows developers to work on improvement and fix errors and redeploy the individual service without redeploying the complete application.
Error Isolation
One of the disadvantages of monolithic architecture is finding errors. An error that occurs within a component can make the whole application inaccessible. Error isolation is simpler with microservices. The app is divided into functional components, so an error in an individual service won’t terminate the app.
Various Tech Stacks
Developers can choose the tech stack that best suits each service. There is no need to commit to a standardized tech stack, so developers have more control.
What Are the 5 Characteristics of Microservices?
Multi-Components
An app built using microservice architecture consists of individual components. Each service can be created and updated individually without redeploying the whole software. This allows developers to update a specific function while the other app functionalities are still available. There is no need to take down the entire app.
Resistant to Failure
The concept of microservices makes the app more resistant to failure. At one point, the services might fail and affect the operations. However, this can be solved with a correctly configured microservice application, where the traffic from the failed function reroutes. In this case, the other services will proceed with working. One of the ways to minimize the risk of failure is to monitor the individual services so your team is ready to bring them back.
Simple Routing Process
Microservices use a simple routing process, unlike other methods. The components are connected, so the information flows between them. The single service receives the request, processes it, and creates a suitable output.
Decentralized Operation
The centralized governance method is not relatable to microservices since this method relies on various technologies and platforms. The decentralized operations allow developers to create tools for solving problems and share them with others worldwide.
Built for Modern Businesses
Modern businesses that rely on digital technology enjoy the benefits of microservices. The monolithic approach includes teams that work on developing different functions. The microservices approach uses cross-functional teams that focus on one component service.
What Are Some Examples of Microservices?
Companies that handle high volumes of requests rely on service-oriented architectures to streamline the process. Amazon started with a monolith design principle, meaning developers had to be careful not to disrupt the process when performing an upgrade. The monolithic architecture was a widely adopted method for building sites back then, suiting the business capabilities. However, the customer base grew, and developers couldn’t keep up with the challenges.
To solve this, the software was divided into simple services. Each application handled the individual functionality of the famous retail website. Individual services were created for the buy button, tax calculator, and other functionalities. These initial apps were gathered using a single interface. Each independent service got a dedicated development team assigned for quick problem-solving.
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