Microservice Architecture

After exploring Monolithic Architecture and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), let's now dive into Microservice Architecture, a popular approach for building scalable, resilient, and adaptable systems.

Microservice architecture pushes modularity further than SOA by breaking down the system into smaller, fully independent services, each focusing on a specific task or business function.

While SOA services handle broader, high-level business processes, microservices operate on more granular, focused operations, making them even more flexible and easier to scale.

Microservice architecture involves splitting an application into multiple lightweight services that work together. Unlike monolithic systems, where everything is part of one codebase, or SOA systems with a few larger services, microservices are designed to function independently. Each microservice has its own data management, logic, and deployment lifecycle, making it possible to develop, test, and deploy them independently.

Key Characteristics of Microservices

• Autonomy: each microservice can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently;
• Decentralized Data Management: every service can maintain its own database, promoting data independence;
• Fault Isolation: if one service fails, it doesn't bring down the entire application, as the services are loosely coupled;
• Technology Diversity: different microservices can use different programming languages or databases, allowing teams to choose the most suitable tools for each service.

Pros and Cons

Example

In an e-commerce platform with a microservice architecture, the application is split into several smaller, domain-specific services. Here is how the system might look:

1. User Microservice manages the UI and serves as the primary point of interaction for customers. It provides the product listings, shopping cart functionality, and checkout pages;

2. Product Microservice is responsible for managing the product catalog. It stores product details such as name, price, and availability in a dedicated Product DB;

3. Order Microservice manages the order processing logic, ensuring that orders are correctly tracked and updated. It maintains order statuses and inventory updates using a separate Order DB;

4. Payment Microservice handles secure payment processing by interacting with external payment gateways. It uses a Payment DB to store payment records and transaction details.

Pay attention that each microservice has its own database to store relevant information. This isolation prevents dependencies across services, ensuring each microservice can function independently without relying on a shared database.