Microservices are increasingly used in the world of development. Microservices are an architectural and organizational approach to software development in which software consists of small independent services that communicate through well-defined APIs.
Microservice architectures make applications easier to scale and faster to develop, enabling innovation and speeding up the time to market for new features. In their simplest form, these services can be written in different programming languages and can use different storage techniques.
With a microservice architecture, an application is built as a set of independent components that execute each application process as a service. These services communicate via a well-defined interface using lightweight APIs. The services are designed for business opportunities and each service performs a single function. Because they run independently, each service can be updated, deployed, and scaled to meet the demand for application-specific features.
Characteristics of microservices:
- They have autonomy - each service can be developed, deployed, operated and scaled without affecting the functioning of other services. This achieves independent implementation in different systems.
- They have a specific purpose - each service is designed for a set of options and focuses on solving a specific problem.
Advantages of microservices:
- They are flexible - micro-services encourage the use of small and independent teams that act intelligently, independently and quickly, thus reducing the time required for development and improving overall productivity.
- They have the ability to scale - microservices allow each service to be independently scaled to meet the demand for the function of the application it supports.
- Easy implementation - microservices allow continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD), making it easy to try new ideas and go back if something doesn't work. This allows experimentation, facilitates code updates, and speeds up time to market for new features.
- Technological freedom - micro-service teams have the freedom to choose the best tool, approach and programming language to solve their specific problems. This eliminates the risk of being limited to certain technologies and languages.
- Code reusability - dividing software into small, well-defined microservices (modules) allows teams to use features for other purposes. A service written for a specific function can be reused as a basic element for another function.
- Resilience - service independence increases application resilience to failure. In a monolithic architecture, if one component fails, this can cause the entire application to fail. With microservices, this problem is fixed, as applications deal with complete service corruption, degrading functionality and not crashing the entire application.
Microservices enable and require DevOps - One way to look at the relationship between microservices and DevOps is that microservice architectures actually require DevOps to be successful. Maintaining the lifecycle of microservices requires teamwork and collaboration between development and operations teams, depending on how DevOps teams work. Experienced DevOps have the knowledge and capabilities to use microservice architectures in software development projects.