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Microservice Architecture

domainindependent deployapieventsdevops
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Microservice Architecture

Summary

Independent, deployable services aligned to business domains, communicating via APIs, events, or streams.

What it is

A distributed style decomposing systems into small services owned by autonomous teams, enabling independent releases and scaling.

Responsibilities

  • Each service owns its data and contracts
  • Resilience patterns: retries, timeouts, circuit breakers
  • Observability and platform guardrails

Patterns

  • Domain-driven boundaries
  • Saga and outbox for consistency
  • BFF for tailored client APIs
  • Service mesh for zero trust

Trade-offs

  • Operational complexity and higher cognitive load
  • Distributed systems failure modes
  • Testing and data consistency become harder

When to use

  • Complex, evolving domains with many teams
  • Need for independent scaling and releases
  • Strong platform engineering in place

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