Microservices- The cloud-native architectural approach.

Microservices have revolved around the architecture and characteristics of businesses giving them the organizational advantages of:

• Easy code updating, adding features and functionalities without touching the whole application.
• Provision of using different technology stacks and programming languages for different elements by the teams.
• Dealing components independently, without having to scale the entire application as a single feature can give too much load, thereby reducing junk and cost of development.

Microservices or microservice architecture is an architectural category in which frequent and credible delivery of applications is enabled. According to a recent Statista survey, the microservices adoption level in organizations in the global context showed that 37% of the organisations adopted microservices partially.

In yet another survey, 45% of the organisation stated that data analytics/business intelligence applications use microservices. The cloud-native architectural approach has its technology stack like data management model and database and interacts with each other through APIs.

Did you know that eBay, Amazon, Twitter, PayPal are all examples of microservice architecture. Well, there are more interesting facts about microservice architecture. Let’s explore…

What is microservice architecture?

In microservices, a single application is made of many loosely associated and independently deployable smaller components in a cloud-native architectural approach. The microservices commonly include:

1. Own technology stack including database and data management model.
2. Interacting ability with each other through a combination of Rest APIs, event streaming and/or message proxies.
3. Organized by business capability with the line segregating services often referred to as a bounded text.

How microservices work?

As already mentioned, a set of services that act together and interact through APIs or data streams to make an entire application work is what microservices are all about. 

But how does the underlying software work? The coming session will brief you how the microservices work through simple explanations.

The teams who built the service with the underlying software or the hardware on which it is built is the primary focus of the working side of the microservice architecture. Your company’s teams involved in microservices have to be resilient with a strong communication channel  and dynamic service upgradings.

Kubernetes are not necessary components of microservices, but have helped in advancing the microservices to a large extent. Furthermore, cloud computing is yet another reason for the following progressions that happened in the microservices field:

• There is no need for users to have a robust computer system to run the necessary operations
• Companies using individual servers to run its service every time users run the application

In microservice architecture, the users’ system might be responsible for basic processing. But mostly these users will be responsible for sending and receiving network calls to other computers.

While using a microservice-made application, you should assume a certain number (say 10 or 15 or even more) in order to enhance the user experience.

Microservices are regarded as a sensible evolution of SOA and monolithic architectures, but there are visible differences between these architectures. 

How is microservice different from Monolithic architecture and SOA?

Monolithic architecture and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are the most frequently drawn comparisons of microservice architecture.

Monolithic architecture composes large, tightly coupled applications whereas microservices have single applications from several loosely coupled services- this is the primary difference between the two.

Microservices and SOA has it’s disparities in terms of technical parameters particularly in terms of Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). For SOA, there is an enterprise-wide measure to normalize the manner in which various web services in an organisation interact with each other, but microservice architecture is application-specific.

What is microservice architecture used for?

Microservices help in quickening applications development and are commonly built using Java. Other languages supported by microservice architecture include Golang, Python, Node JS, .Net etc. 

Some of the examples where microservice architecture is used are:

Website migration:

A complex application that is built on a monolithic platform can be migrated to a cloud-powered and container-based microservices platform.

Media content:

You can transfer and store images, videos and other media contents in a scalable storage system that can be directed to website or mobile applications using microservice architecture.

Transactions and invoices

Ordering and payment processing are separate units of services as a payment can be accepted if invoices are not working.

Data processing

Modular data processing services can be powered with cloud services with the help of microservices platform.

What are the characteristics of microservice architecture?

Multiple components

Microservices have multiple components and each component can be deployed, altered and redeployed separately without affecting the app integrity. This means that you need to change only one or more of the multiple component services when necessary and need not redeploy the application as a whole.

Business-centric

Unlike traditional architecture like the monolithic architecture that concentrates on UI, databases, technology layers or server-side logic, micro services concentrate on business abilities and priorities. Through cross-functional teams, each of them concentrate on one or more of individual services communicating through the message bus. The teams will follow the ‘you build it, you run it’ policy and have to assume complete ownership of the product in microservices.

Simple routing

Microservices receive requests, process them, and generate a corresponding response. For other products like ESB, there will be high-tech systems for message routing, choreography, and business rules. In microservices, the presence of smart endpoints process info, apply logic and manage routes through which information flows.

Decentralized

To solve common problems faced by the developers and to share the tools for resolving the problem, decentralized governance is supported by the microservices community. Micro service architecture has decentralised data management also, with each service managing its unique database.

Resistant to failure 

As microservices have different services communicating with each other, when one service fails it is quite possible that the other fails too. But microservices are designed to adjust with such failures by enabling the neighbouring services to keep running even when a service fails. Continuous monitoring will prevent risk of failure to a large degree.

Evolutionary 

Microservice architecture has an evolutionary design that is optimal for evolutionary systems as understanding the type of devices accessing your application  is totally unpredictable. Applications that were initiated on monolithic architecture can be upgraded to microservice architecture to meet certain requirements and enable interactions through API.

What are the benefits of microservice architecture?

• Developers can independently develop and deploy services.
• A small team is enough to develop a microservice.
• Different languages can be used for different services.
• Easy integration and automated deployment can be done.
• Developers can easily understand and modify, and hence a new team member can become efficient in no time.
• Latest technologies can be used.
• The code is centred on business capabilities.
• Faster deployment through quick initiating of the web containers.
• Change can be made to a particular service or group of services alone, instead of rebuilding the entire app.
• Failures can be isolated i.e. if one service fails, the other will continue to function.
• Third-party integration is easily scalable and integrable.
• There is no long term commitment to technology stacks.

The future of microservice architecture:

Microservices are potent ideas that offer many advantages in terms of developing enterprise applications. Developers and organisations have been in the quest for an architecture that could use APIs and microservices is the one viable solution they arrived at.

Microservices could resolve a number of segmentation and communication issues of the existing technologies. When you contemplate the complexity and communication requirements of SaaS or IoT or other modern technology applications, microservices have a very bright future to propose.