Today Cloud Computing is creating a controllable and elastic software that can be increased or decreased depending on the demand. This technology led organizations to shed their monolithic software design methodology and move to the new age of loosely coupled, independently working miniature software models that can be integrated with each other: popularly known as Microservices.
Microservices is an architectural style used to build a single application with the integration of smaller independent services, where each service is designed to run in its own process. These services communicate with each other and also with end users using lightweight protocols and APIs mostly over HTTP. Microservices can also be considered as a form of service-oriented architecture(SOA) wherein applications are built as a collection of different smaller services rather than one whole app. Unlike a monolithic app, Microservices aIlow you to run a single application through several independent applications. These independent applications can be created using different programming languages and even different platforms. Several large and complex applications can be broken | into simple, independent applications which when integrated together can bring about the same output achieved from the complex and tightly coupled monolithic application.
Microservices stress more the “What problem are you trying to solve?” aspect thereby giving more insight and detailed analysis of the business scenario. Microservices replaces the large teams working on large, monolithic projects with smaller, more agile teams that develop the services using the tools and frameworks they are most comfortable with. Each of the involved programs is independently versioned, executed, and scaled. These microservices can interact with other microservices and can have unique URLs or names while being always available and consistent, even when failures are experienced. |
So, should we be really developing using Microservices?
Yes and No. Yes, where it is appropriate based on the application requirements. Many would argue that every application should be developed with this in mind, but quite often there are client-server applications that may not fit the model well, and it also requires a new approach to development that is new to a lot of developers.
There is little doubt that a microservices architecture is a great enabler for scalability, resiliency, and generally good development practices. Not only at initial deployment, but every upgrade to portions of the application becomes safer because of the loose coupling of the components. It will add some complexity to the initial design and development, so that needs to be accounted for during the planning phases.
My opinion is that microservices is the right direction. We will undoubtedly see the continued adoption and evolution of microservices architectures. What began as SOA began may gain a few different names along the path, but it the result will be more flexible, resilient application architectures. It is difficult to argue that flexibility and resiliency aren't important and well worth any minimal trade-offs for a nominal amount of extra development time.
Microservices have many benefits. They are broadly classified based on how they allow your developers to write code how it influences your software architecture.
The biggest advantage with Microservices is that it allows the developers to use the programming language that they are skilled in; and this invariably reduces the time they take to adjust to new software development environments, and also helps them write efficient code which reduces the number of bugs. The second-best advantage with Microservices is that it allows smaller applications that your development teams create independently to talk to each other using simple HTTP requests called APIs.
Since your teams are working on smaller applications and more focused problem domains, their projects tend to be more agile, too. They can iterate faster, address new features on a shorter schedule, and turn around bug fixes almost immediately. They often find more opportunities to reuse code as well.
Microservices improve your architecture’s scalability, too. With monolithic systems, you usually end up “throwing more hardware” at the problem or purchasing expensive and difficult-to-maintain enterprise software. With microservices, you can scale horizontally with standard solutions like load balancers and messaging.
Also, as more and more enterprises embrace the Cloud, you’re probably looking that way, too. Microservices are a great way to get there.
Benefits of
Microservices
Conclusion
Breaking a system down into microservices is a technique that makes it possible to reduce the burden carried by the server, while still providing the array of services taken for granted in large business applications. This is accomplished by separating the server’s data and business logic into smaller web services that are then combined to deliver the required features to the user.
We’ve seen that microservice architectures offer numerous benefits. But, as the number of services grows, you go from one problem (keeping people from stepping on each other’s toes when working on a common project) to another (having to make sense of a large number of services and to decide how to combine them to get real work done).
So, as usual, there are no panaceas, although the advantages of this promising approach in enabling a smooth transformation to a more agile and resilient enterprise should be kept close in mind as modern systems are constructed.