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Introduction
There are a number of architectural styles or approaches upon which software applications are built and developed. These approaches help to organize and standardize the process of application development, integration, and support.
The monolith architecture is the most popular approach, which is known as an all-in-one application. There exists another architecture known as microservices. It involves the breaking down of the application system into smaller independent units.
This article outlines the salient features and benefits of monolithic and microservices architecture.
Monolithic Architecture
Monolithic software architecture is the traditional method of software development. As the name implies, mono (i.e one), is an architecture based on a single application, without a divisibly independent unit. This architecture comprises the end-user interface, a server-side application, and a database, which are integrated as a single application and work together interdependently.
A monolithic architecture is suitable for the implementation of a simple and less-traffic application. A fault/bug in any part of the application can disrupt the entire functionality of the application. It is simple to build with less complexity and centralized software architecture. Monoliths are not as reliant on the network and they also give room for you to familiarize yourself with the domain.
Examples of monolithic applications include personal portfolios, web applications for corporate organizations, etc.
Microservice Architecture
This software architecture consists of smaller independent units, which form the whole application system. In a microservice-based application, each microservice (independent unit) has its respective logic and databases. These independent services work together to form the complete system. The small services perform a specific task.
Microservice-based architecture helps in scalability, fault isolation, and improves easier understanding, though it could be complex to build as they run a distributed system. It could also be more difficult to test because of the multitude of independently deployable components and units.
One of the benefits of microservice architecture over the monolithic approach is the ease of deployment and management on cloud computing platforms such as Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), AWS, etc. The communication between the applications in a microservice architecture is based on RESTful API endpoints.
Conclusively, microservice architecture is autonomous, decentralized (i.e distributed), and auto-provisioning. It is best used for complex applications that will tend to generate large traffic in the future.
Applications based on microservice architecture are Amazon eCommerce application, Paypal, Spotify, Walmart, PassportScan, and Netflix.
Microservice architecture
Conclusion
The benefits of microservice architecture are numerous and it is growing popular, but not all applications are best implemented using the microservice architecture. You can choose to start with a monolith application and make it modularized. When you realize that the traffic of the application is getting higher and there is a need to scale up, then you split the application into microservices.
Both monolithic and microservice approaches have their respective pros and cons, choosing the right one depends on the complexity of the business logic and how professional your development team is.