Different Ways to View Microservices

This is often called developing a monolithic application. Such an application is personalized to the needs of your client and can hardly be used by any other client. By redesigning your application so that you can reuse sections of your code for your other clients, you will be able to provide a toolkit of shareable code. However, your software library is still constrained by the programming language you use. Microservice extends this view further by turning your shareable library into an independent standalone service. Here are different ways to view microservices.

Dedicated

A microservice is a small and dedicated autonomous role-specific service that can be called by any software client as it is hosted remotely and accessed via the web. A microservice is often deployed on the cloud and hosted on platforms such as AWS (Amazon Web Services), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, IBM Bluemix and Alibaba Cloud. Examples of microservices are many and can include document conversion from one format to another, image processing and enhancement, address verification and location to user authentication and validation.

Language-Independent

A microservice can be used by software written in any programming language because access to a microservice is done through established web APIs or Application Programming Interfaces. These APIs are executed through the web via HTTP with well-defined addresses and query parameters. Depending on where the microservice is hosted, the returned results may be in standardized JSON or XML formats that are easy to parse. Popular programming languages written to support microservices include Java, Python, Ruby, Javascript, C++, and C#. Artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning algorithms are often written in Python and can be made available as serverless microservices.

Distributed and Modular

A microservice client application is no longer monolithic but distributed and modular. Instead of maintaining your databases for all of your code, you can delegate sections of your code to use microservices with their databases and only maintain a smaller number of custom databases. Debugging an application based on a microservice architecture is made easier as you get to focus your resources more on the personalized sections of your application. Choosing reliable and mature third-party microservices is essential to produce robust applications.

Full Stack

An application that utilizes the microservice architecture can be a full stack application where development focuses on both the frontend user interface and backend logic and database processing. Both sections can utilize microservices to achieve their tasks. A frontend development typically needs user authentication and validation which is well-served by a microservice deploying the OAuth2 protocol. A backend development may involve the basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) operations of a database served by another microservice. An e-commerce application may utilize a payment processing microservice to handle secure credit card transactions.

Parallel Development

An organization that deploys the microservice architecture can reduce the software life cycle from months to weeks by structuring their development and testing in parallel. For example, frontend services can be developed and tested in parallel with backend services as they do not encroach upon each other. When both sections have been thoroughly tested, they can be integrated seamlessly. Using third-party microservices frees up an organization's resources to adapt to Agile-Scrum development methodology and project management.

Scaleable

Microservice architecture is often scaleable as new features can be added to it by providing more end-user API entry points. As long as the existing APIs do not change or additional variants of the existing APIs are added, microservice users can continue to enjoy the new benefits without changing their existing code. Much of the microservice development and testing can be done remotely too. This opens up many new work-at-home opportunities for professional developers.

The microservice paradigm is an extension of producing reusable modular libraries once restricted to a particular programming language. With the advancement of web and cloud computing technologies, the microservice architecture has opened up a whole new world of software development methodology that crosses the language boundary. It will enable more productive and efficient project management and worth the investment of any future-forward organization.