Spring Boot Microservices — Learning through examples
Microservices is an architecture pattern that is realized through a set of patterns and technologies. This article sets the foundation for our series which helps in understanding each of these patterns along with their sample implementations. Our exercise-driven learning series is based on Spring Boot, Spring Cloud, and the related technologies.
Before we jump into the world of Microservices, let's spend some time understanding the fundamentals. As it involves, a multitude of technologies, it's easy to lose track. If you think, you are already aware of the fundamentals, associated patterns, and frameworks, you can skip it and move to the series directly.
What is Microservices?
The new architecture pattern is been adopted by almost all sizes of organizations, be it small, medium, or large. Organizations have started realizing the value of it. In spite of such widespread adoption of this pattern, it's unfortunate, there is no consistent definition of Microservices.
One of the early adopters of Microservices Architecture — Netflix describes it as nothing but a fine-grained SOA (Service-oriented Architecture). Martin Fowler, the pioneer of software development, says — the microservice architectural style is an approach to develop a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API. These services are built around business capabilities and independently deployable by fully automated deployment machinery.
Chris Richardson from https://microservices.io/ has laid out the characteristics of a Microservice more concretely I feel. He refers to it as an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of services that are
- Highly maintainable and testable
- Loosely coupled
- Independently deployable
- Organized around business capabilities
- Owned by a small team
