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The Difference Between Microservices and Other Architectures

HapPhi explains why we chose a microservices architecture. A microservices architecture is a software architecture pattern in which you break your application up into small, independent services that are distributed across different physical and virtual machines. Each service is responsible for performing a single function and supporting user transactions. These services are deployed as separate units and integrated with an application at the business logic level only. So, a customer journey typically follows the following path:

Written by
June 15, 2022

The Difference Between Microservices and Other Architectures


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The microservices architecture is often considered the holy grail of modern software engineering. It’s been heralded as being the key to unlocking the potential of digital transformation and achieving company-wide agility. However, microservices isn’t the only way to achieve these benefits. Other architectures -- such as the serverless architecture or continuous delivery -- can also help you modernize your software development process, speed up time to market, and increase agility throughout your organization. So what exactly is a microservices architecture, and how does it compare to other architectures? In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the major software architecture paradigms that have emerged over the last few years and see how they stack up against microservices.


What is a Microservices Architecture?

A microservices architecture is an approach to software design. It’s not a specific company or product; it’s more of a design philosophy. The term ‘microservices’ was coined in 2011 by Martin Fowler, following his experience designing large-scale systems at Amazon.com. At its core, a microservices architecture is an organizational model that calls for large products or systems to be broken down into smaller, more manageable chunks – essentially, microservices. The idea is that splitting up a large product into several smaller components will help the organization to manage complexity and promote scalability. The main goals of a microservices architecture are to support distributed teams, promote continuous delivery, and control risk.


Limitations of Microservices

While microservices has many benefits, they come with tradeoffs as well. One potential issue is scalability. If you have a very large microservice and then split it into several smaller microservices, it can be a challenge to keep each microservice running as efficiently as it did before. If each service is doing all the same tasks as the larger service, it can be even more problematic. Another issue that has been brought up with microservices is communications and coordination among the teams working on the project. With a large team working in a single codebase, it’s easy to jump on a pair and get to work. With microservices, you first have to figure out which team is responsible for the microservice you need to use. Then, you have to coordinate with that team to get your work done.


Continuous Delivery and Dark Launch

While microservices are often mentioned in the same breath as agile development, continuous delivery is a concept that’s heavily associated with the DevOps movement. Continuous delivery is an Agile software delivery approach that aims to eliminate the gap between writing code and releasing that code to production by implementing rigorous automated testing procedures and software installation and deployment best practices. While microservices are used to break down complex software into more manageable chunks, continuous delivery is used to move code through the development pipeline as quickly and efficiently as possible. This can be accomplished through what’s known as a “dark launch,” or deploying your code to a live production environment that is not accessible by customers. This allows you to test your code in a real-world scenario without interrupting your customers. With this method, you can deploy your code across all environments (testing, staging, and production) simultaneously, which greatly reduces the time between when code is written and when it’s released to customers.


Serverless Architecture

A serverless architecture refers to applications that are designed to run without servers. It’s a concept that’s been around since the early days of the internet, but it’s only been in the last few years that we’ve seen the technology mature enough to actually be viable. With a serverless architecture, you don’t manage or maintain any servers. Instead, you just write code and a cloud provider (like Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform) takes care of the rest. Most serverless architectures use containers to run code. This allows the code to be highly scalable and portable – regardless of whether it runs on a single computer or thousands of computers, it works the same way.


Conclusion

The microservices architecture is one of many software architecture paradigms that have emerged over the last few years. However, it’s important to note that no one architecture is right for every situation. At the end of the day, you should use the architecture that works best for your organization. With that being said, microservices architecture is particularly well-suited for large organizations with distributed teams, where there is potential for a lot of interdependency. It’s also an ideal choice if you want to implement a continuous delivery process.

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