Danish version: http://qed.dk/jeppe-cramon/2014/02/24/microservices-det-er-ikke-kun-stoerrelsen-det-er-vigtigt-det-er-ogsaa-hvordan-du-bruger-dem-del-1/
Part 2 – Microservices: It’s not (only) the size that matters, it’s (also) how you use them
Part 3 – Microservices: It’s not (only) the size that matters, it’s (also) how you use them
Part 4 – Microservices: It’s not (only) the size that matters, it’s (also) how you use them
Part 5 – Microservices: It’s not (only) the size that matters, it’s (also) how you use them
Part 6 – Service vs Components vs Microservices
Text updated the 22nd of June 2021
We have finally come to the exciting development I hinted at in SOA – Hierarchy or organic growth?
In the blog post Microservices: synchronous communication, data ownership and coupling, we examined the 4 Tenets of Service Orientation and specifically focused on service boundaries and autonomy problems due (synchronous) 2 way communication between Services. With this knowledge in hand, we are well prepared for the topic of this blog post.
The subject, as the title indicates, is micro services, which in many ways is a response to monolithic architectures. As with SOA, Micro Services also lack a clear definition. The only thing people seem to agree on is that Micro services are small and they are individually deployable. Rule of thumb says that Micro services weigh in around 10-100 lines of code (for languages with minimal ceremony and excl. Frameworks and libraries – although the last point is disputed among purists).
Number of lines of code is in my opinion a horrible measuring stick for determining whether a (micro) service has the correct size or for that matter if it is a good service.
Good guidelines for designing micro services in terms of scope (size) and integration form (how to use them) seems to be lacking. Without these guidelines it becomes difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff and one could easily be tempted to claim that the layered SOA (anti) pattern (see diagram below) also meets the micro service size rule of thumb (and then we know that some people will be tempted to cross off micro services on their list and say that they have them too, without looking closely at what micro services is all about and therefore never will come near designing proper micro services).
So are the services within a classic layered SOA real micro services?
Continue reading “Microservices: It’s not (only) the size that matters, it’s (also) how you use them – part 1”
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