Microservices Introduction | Definition, Types, & Benefits
What is Microservices?
Microservices architecture, or simply microservices, are the powerful and trendy software development method that has been favored by large Agile enterprises. However, making the jump to this architecture is not an easy task. By providing truthful answers to the What-Why-How questions, we will walk you through the general knowledge of microservices architecture, their benefits, and how they work.
Monolithic Architecture: The Early Edition of Microservices
Microservices evolves from the traditional monolithic architecture. Basically, monolithic architecture is a big container wherein all the software components of an application are assembled together and tightly packaged.
However, the traditional monolithic system can be a burden to maintain and update. Monolithic applications are too clunky to move fast, and in order to meet the demands of the market, more and more companies are now evolving from a monolithic to a microservices architecture due to its many advantages.
What Are Microservices Architecture?
Microservices architecture is the modern method of designing software applications that compartmentalize the software into chunks of small and independent services. In other words, it is the style of engineering highly automated, and evolvable software systems made up of capability-aligned microservices.
Focusing on building is the primary function of microservices architecture. Instead of one code repository in a traditional monolithic style, a microservice architecture breaks up that repository into several smaller repositories.
Why Microservices Architecture Matters?
Microservices architecture matters to those who value the time spent going through massive codebases, which is often like finding a needle in a haystack. In a monolithic application, adding new features or fixing a bug in the main codebase can often trigger new bugs in another part of the code. Microservices architecture, on the other hand, makes it easier to pinpoint errors that may arise when adding new features or bug fixes. Without a doubt, those who don’t transition to microservices will soon be left in the dust.
Benefits of Microservices Architecture
Working with microservices architecture enables rapid and frequent delivery for large and often complex applications while also increasing quality reliability. The adoption of microservices architecture yields the following benefits:
Highly maintainable and testable
As each service is independent of the other, making changes to that service would not affect the rest of the product’s codebase, resulting in easier maintenance and faster testing.
Independently deployable
Each service can be deployed at one time, which means less time is needed to test the entire application for any changes made to that specific service.
Loosely coupled
Microservices structures an application as a set of loosely coupled services, minimizing the dependencies of one service to another. Learn more
Types of Microservices
There are two types of microservices: stateful and stateless.
Stateful
Stateful microservices is recommended if there are cases where session information needs to be stored. And by storing session information in the code, it will help maintain a service request state.
Stateless
This type of microservices is recommended if using a distributed system. Simply put, stateless services act as the foundation for the distributed application. It does not maintain the session state between requests. If any service within the application is removed, it will not affect the processing logic for that service, and it would become a part of the overall application.
How Does Microservices Architecture Work?
Microservices architecture breaks each part of the codebase into multiple modular and loosely coupled components, through which each service performs one or more functions.
Each service should be aligned with business capabilities to ensure you are meeting each function’s requirements. These individual functions should be distributed across clouds and data centers and treated as an independent service, therefore allowing each to be changed, updated, or deleted without putting the rest of the application at risk.
Communication between each service is essential to ensure seamless interaction. Microservices use APIs and communication protocols to work with each other. Building the service behind an API gateway allows for easier interaction. However, it also facilitates product efficiency, reduced coding efforts, and decreased risk of creating errors.
Whether starting from scratch and building a product using microservices right away or transitioning from a monolithic legacy application, microservices are a great way to have an easily maintainable and scalable product. With greater agility to create new features and fix bugs quickly, your product can get to market faster than the competition and also please your customers with quick updates.
Conclusion:
While microservices architectures are very popular nowadays, it’s not a one-size-fit-all solution for every software development problem. So before making the big decision and beginning a transition to this method, make sure that you have fully evaluated it.
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