Microservice Architecture

The industry has long been using Monolithic Architecture to develop enterprise applications. It is also interchangeably called multi-tier architecture because of its layered division i.e. presentation, business, database, application, etc.

With Monolithic Architecture all software components of an application are assembled and tightly packed. These components are interconnected and interdependent i.e. each component along with the associated component must be present to execute or compile the code.

Many companies have invested heavily to build applications using a monolithic approach. These applications catered only to the desktop/laptop devices with Web Browser as the client, which doesn’t require data exposure to the API, by and large, because browsers can understand only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Even though enterprise was using Enterprise Data Bus (EDB), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Enterprise Data Exchange (EDX), and many more data exchange formats to communicate with each other in the back-end. But over time, the entire paradigm shifted from browser-desktop to mobile-smart devices. Thus data had to be served to various devices and forms.

Disadvantages of Monolith Architecture

Large and Complex Applications: With an increase in the size of the application it becomes complex to understand and modify. As a result, development slows down and modularity breaks down over time. Moreover, because of the complexity, it can be difficult to understand how to correctly implement a change, and due to that quality of code declines over time.

Slow Development: As the application and the respective teams grow the application becomes difficult to modify and understand. With the size and multiple teams working on the application, it becomes difficult to modify. Also, the larger the code base slower the IDE and that makes the developers less productive.

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The codebase is pretty large because the entire application is one monolithic application. It blocks continuous development and hence to update one component you have to redeploy the entire application which interrupts the background task.

There is also a chance that components that haven’t been updated will fail to start correctly. As a result the risk associated with redeployment increases which discourage frequent updates. Continuously integration/deployment becomes complex and time-consuming. You may require a dedicated team to build and deploy

Scaling: Each block of application instance will get access to all the data which makes caching less effective and increase memory consumption along with input/output traffic. Also, different application components have different resource requirements. One might be CPU intensive another might be memory intensive and with Monolithic architecture, each component cannot be scaled independently.

Microservices Architecture

Microservices Architecture structures an application as a collection of small autonomous services which is developed, deployed, and tested individually centering on a business domain.

It is a self-contained process that avails different and unique business capabilities. Applications built using this architectural pattern can be broken down into small multiple services which together can access one large system. Each microservice can focus on one single business capability which leads to better quality.

In a perfect world, this modular architectural style accelerates business growth by facilitating the agile deployment of innovative functionality. But, breaking down applications can also add complexity while comparing to a monolithic model.

In general, in Microservice Architecture all components are divided into separate modules which communicate with each other using a well-defined interface such as the REST protocol. Communication between each module is a stateless communication where each pair of requests and responses is an independent transaction. Each microservice is responsible for its own data model and data because of its interaction with each microservices handled by different instances.

Features of Microservice

Small Focused: The aim of microservice architecture is simplicity. So that it can be rewritten and maintained without any extra efforts by the development team.

Loosely Coupled: As each microservices independent of each other and do not need to coordinate with each other. This makes development as well as deployment real quick. So during the update, only the required service needs to be updated.

Language Neutral: For example, few applications can be written in Python for fast deployment whereas a few might be written in Java because of its speed and extensive libraries.

Bounded Context: Each Microservice doesn’t need to understand the implementation of other Microservices.

Advantages of Microservice Architecture

Independent Development and Deployment: With Microservice architecture each specific Microservice can be delegated to specific development teams, which enables them to focus singularly on one service or feature. This implies that teams can work autonomously without being concerned about the progress of the rest of the applications. Also, independent development implies independent deployment, enabling continuous improvements and speedier updates.

Fault Isolation

On failure of a specific microservice, you can isolate the failure to that microservice and prevent the failure from cascading into crashing the entire application. This fault isolation reduces downtime i.e your critical application can be functional even when one of its modules fails.

Granular Scaling

With rising demand, it is easier to scale the application using microservice architecture. Resources can be delegated to the most needed microservices rather than scaling the entire app. This means faster scaling along with cost-efficiency.

Use Cases of Microservice Architecture

Big Data Applications

Microservice, together with Event-Driven Architecture (EDA), is an easy fit for complex applications and cloud environments in most cases. The loosely coupled architecture offers scalability and extensibility to the required application.

Amazon in its application deployment simplified its pipeline, discovered new problem areas, and rebuilt a robust application framework while presenting a new open-source system to handle the huge volume of data. The service-based microservice architecture effectively supported every function across the globe.

Rising traffic was overwhelming e-bay and it was becoming difficult for the systems to handle the complexities of growth. To serve a database of 75 million per day, e-Bay opted to divide the application, the database, and the search engine by choosing the microservice architecture.

Since the technology was initially introduced, regular updates have kept the company stable while raising its time-to-market rate.

Real-time Data Processing

The ‘publish-subscribe messaging format used in microservice architecture allows for seamless asynchronous communication for streaming platforms to process and analyze data in real-time for streaming platforms to produce intelligent outputs.

The popular OTT platform Netflix uses more than 500 microservice and APIs making it a fascinating case study that focuses on the many benefits offered by microservices.

Organizations that deal with high-volume unstructured data such as social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have to be scalable while being flexible.

Microservices allow for seamless identification of roadblocks and faster deployments. Twitter shifted to microservice architecture using Scala and Java from the traditional web application.

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Multi-Group Developments

To meet continuing release timelines, different developers working simultaneously on an application’s feature is how the software development space is building up. To reduce the various scenarios of the code succumbing on the ‘merge day’ microservices architectures allow applications to be divided into independent services, to be able to be managed and linked in together by individual groups.

Conclusion

Rightfully, there are many advantages to microservice architecture- but it is also critical to consider your organizational culture as well as organizational goals. Enterprises better suited to microservice architecture are those with a culture of delegating work among small development teams. Besides, these organizations are quick to adapt to changes and have a larger or more diverse user base. For detailed guidance about microservices architecture contact us.

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