What is Microservices Architecture

Definition

Microservices architecture is an architectural style used in application development through which large applications are integrated into a small suite of modular services. Though there are very limited things to know about it, for most of the developers it is a preferable way of creating enterprise applications. This architectural method has gained popularity in recent days and it is considered to be particularly ideal to enable support for a range of platforms and devices—spanning web, mobile applications, internet of things and wearables or other devices that connect to cloud. And, in a short term, it has become a default mechanism for building enterprise applications.

There is no standard definition for microservices but there are certain characteristics which help users to identify the style. In other words, Microservices is an alternative form of service-oriented-architecture (SOA) design that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services. In this architectural methodology, the software applications are integrated as a suite of independently deployable and modular services that runs as a unique different process and interacts through a well-defined lightweight mechanism to serve business goals.

However, the applications communicate depends on the type of application or the requirements and in most of the cases, developers use HTTP/ REST with JSON.

Understanding the Purpose of Microservices

The applications under monolithic architectural design are built as a single, autonomous unit. For example: In a client-server model, the server-side application is a monolith that deals with the HTTP requests, executes logic, retrieves and updates the database. The major problem in the monolithic architecture is, a single change affects the entire cycle and ends up being tied to one another. To be more precise, a modification made in a small section of an application leads to the requirement of building and deploying entirely a new application.

There are many reasons why Microservices architecture is a considered to be an easier way to develop large applications, particularly enterprise applications and different types of software-as-a-services delivered over the internet:

• Instead of enhancing specific functions or a component, an application might end-up with enhancing entire applications in the cycle. And this is where Microservices comes into the picture and it is quite opposite to the monolithic architecture.
• From a project engineer’s point of view, when different components of an application are separated they can be developed concurrently.
• Another reason is resilience; Components can be spread across multiple servers or even multiple servers instead of relying on single virtual or physical machine.

Advantages of Microservices:

• It gives developers the freedom to develop and deploy the services independently.
• Different coding languages can be used to write code for different services.
• It is easy to scale and integrate with third-party services.
• It allows the developers to use latest technologies.
• There is no need for modifying or redeploying the entire application when a change is required in certain parts of the application.
• It becomes easy to organize code around the business capabilities.
• Deployment of applications becomes easy as it starts the web container more quickly.