Choosing Between Monolithic and Microservices Architecture: A Decision Guide
In the new computing world, mobile and cloud are the levers that are pushing toward a transformation from current legacy enterprise applications towards component applications, and microservices. In recent years, the scenario of information systems in companies has been overwhelmed by a series of changes that have impacted both users and suppliers of solutions and services. Aspects such as the migration towards cloud services and the ever-increasing diffusion of smartphones and IoT devices have forced us to redefine the processes and operating methods respectively, also changing the dynamics of the offer.
The challenge now is therefore to design extremely flexible architectures that can also be implemented in small and medium-sized businesses, which find an insurmountable limit in current technologies and the costs necessary to support them.
Zcoderz will raise the curtain on the differences between monolithic and microservices architecture to make a wise decision in your software development process.
What Is Monolithic Architecture?
Monolithic architecture is a uniform, concentrated design and development approach where an application is composed of a cohesive unit of code.
This approach allows you to create a self-sufficient application that contains absolutely all the necessary functionality without having any type of external dependencies that complement its functionality. All its components work together, thus sharing the same resources and memory.
What Are Microservices?
Microservices represent an architecture but above all an approach to writing software. Through microservices, applications are broken down into their smallest elements, independent of each other. Compared to the traditional monolithic style, where each component is generated within a single element, microservices interact to complete the same tasks.
Each component, or process, represents a microservice. This type of approach to software development, being very lightweight, promotes granularity and allows similar processes to be shared between multiple applications. The orientation towards microservices is one of the main factors that, by optimizing application development, approaches a cloud-native model.
Monolithic Architecture vs Microservices Architecture
In monolithic architectures, all processes are tightly linked to each other and run sequentially as a single service. This means that if you wanted to throttle an application process that makes a large number of requests, you would have to scale it entirely. Adding, eliminating, or improving a single function of the monolithic application is more complex as it requires a readjustment of the entire project. This complexity limits experimentation, making it more difficult to implement new ideas. This type of development represents an additional risk to the availability of the application, as the presence of numerous dependent and closely connected processes increases the impact of a failure in a single process. With a microservices-centric architecture, an application is made up of independent components that run each application process as a service. The services are designed to perform a single function, they do not have to share any code or resources with each other. Any communication between individual components occurs through well-defined lightweight APIs. Because they run independently, each service can be monitored, updated, deployed, and scaled to meet an application's specific function demand.
Advantages of Microservices
The division into isolated components certainly makes an environment suitable for building and managing highly scalable applications. Independently developed and deployed services lead to more agile capabilities while easily responding to today's environmental changes. Microservices offer:
Elimination of āsingle points of failureā
An application broken down into microservices significantly reduces the risk that a code or configuration error affects the entire system. Any unstable services can be individually managed, fixed, and re-deployed without necessarily interrupting the flow of the entire application.
More Elastic Administration:
The Process Development (build, test, deploy, update) can be managed in an agile and simple way by having microservices.
The development, test and production environments therefore remain more consistent and aligned with each other.
Effective Scalability
Scalability is defined at the service level. Depending on the needs of the system, each component can be replicated and deployed on the hardware that is most suitable in terms of resources.
Reusability:
During an update or migration of an application, some microservices that do not need to be modified can remain intact to be used by the new version and by different applications.
Versioning:
APIs can follow a different flow than services. Major and minor releases are offered at the application level, while services require updates only on request.
Freedom of The Development Language:
The microservices pattern eliminates any long-term constraints on the choice of language. When implementing a new service, developers are free to choose the corresponding programming language and framework best suited to the new service. Furthermore, since the services are small, intervening using better languages āāand technologies is very easy.
To Wrap Things Up
Surely when you came to this blog you were wondering what the differences are between monolithic architecture VS. microservices, and at this moment you will be wondering: is monolithic or microservices architecture better?
The answer is simple: Go for a simple and flexible software architecture with microservices!
If you want to get started in your software development project, we have the software you need to make the transition from a monolithic architecture to one of microservices much easier.