Microservices

What it is?

Collection of small, loosely coupled services. These services are designed to be independently deployable, maintainable, and scalable.microservices break down the application into smaller, self-contained services that communicate with each other through well-defined APIs.

Characteristics

• Service Independence: Each microservice operates independently and can be developed, deployed, and scaled separately from the others. This independence allows teams to work on different microservices without affecting the entire system.
• Decentralized Data Management: Microservices often have their own databases or data stores, which means they have control over their own data and schemas. This can help prevent data coupling between services.
• API-Based Communication: Microservices communicate with each other through APIs, typically using lightweight protocols like HTTP/REST or gRPC. This allows them to be language-agnostic and enables interoperability.
• Loose Coupling: Microservices are designed to be loosely coupled, meaning they have minimal dependencies on other services. This reduces the risk of changes in one service impacting others.
• Scalability: Services can be scaled independently based on their specific resource needs. This enables efficient resource utilization and cost savings.
• Resilience: Microservices are expected to be resilient to failures. If one service encounters an issue, it should not bring down the entire application. Redundancy, load balancing, and failover strategies are commonly employed.
• Continuous Delivery: Each microservice can be built, tested, and deployed independently, facilitating continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) practices.
• Technology Diversity: Teams can choose the most appropriate technology stack for each microservice based on the specific requirements of that service. This allows for flexibility and innovation.
• Organizational Alignment: Microservices can align with the structure of development teams. Each team can be responsible for one or more microservices, making ownership and accountability clear.

✅ Pros

• Increased agility
• Easier maintenance
• Improved scalability.
• Increased security (reduced modification scope)

❌ Cons

• Introduce complexities related to service discovery
• Inter-service communication (asynchrony between services) and data management.

Do’s & Don’ts

Its a good practice that each microservices has its own database and no share the database across multiple microservices. It causes scalability problems and increase issue identification.