What is microservices architecture?

Posted By: Riya Saini Published: 14, Jan 2024

What is microservices architecture?

Microservices, also known as microservice architecture, is an architectural approach that organizes an application as a set of interconnected services that are:

• Highly tested and maintainable
• Coupled haphazardly
• Deployable independently
• Organizational structure based on business capabilities
• A tiny group of people owns the company



The microservice design enables huge, sophisticated applications to be delivered quickly, often, and reliably. It also allows a company's technology stack to evolve.




Characteristics of Microservices

• Autonomous

In a microservices architecture, each component service can be built, deployed, operated, and scaled independently of the other services. Other services are not required to share any of their code or implementation. Individual components communicate with one another using well-defined APIs.

• Specialized

Each service is tailored to a unique set of capabilities and aims to solve a specific issue. When developers add additional code to service over time and the service grows more sophisticated, it might be divided into smaller services.




Benefits of Microservices

• Microservices encourage the formation of small, self-contained teams that are responsible for their own services. Teams are empowered to operate more independently and quickly within a small and well-understood environment. This reduces the length of the development cycle. The organization's overall throughput benefits you greatly.

• Flexible Scaling

Each microservice can be grown separately to meet the demand for the application feature it supports. This allows teams to properly size infrastructure, appropriately estimate the cost of a feature, and ensure service availability in the event of a spike in demand.

• Easy Deployment

Microservices allow for continuous integration and delivery, making it simple to experiment with new ideas and roll back if something doesn't work out. The low cost of failure allows for more experimentation, easier code updates, and faster time-to-market for new features.

• Technological Freedom

Microservices architectures aren't built in a "one-size-fits-all" fashion. Teams are allowed to use whatever tool they want to tackle their challenges. As a result, teams developing microservices can select the most appropriate tool for each task.

• Reusable Code

Teams can use functions for many purposes by dividing software into discrete, well-defined modules. A service created for one function can be used as a foundation for another feature. This allows an application to self-bootstrap since developers may add new features without having to write code from scratch.

• Resilience

Service independence improves an application's ability to withstand failure. If a single component fails in a monolithic design, the entire application can fail. Microservices enable apps to handle total service failure by reducing functionality rather than crashing the entire program.