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Software Engineering vocabulary · Architecture, Design Patterns and Graphics

Microservices

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈmaɪkroʊˌsɜːrvɪsɪz/nounCommon term

In software engineering, microservices means: An architecture in which an application is built as many small, independent services, each with one job, that talk to each other over the network.

In Turkish: mikroservisler, mikro hizmetler

How it is used

Usually compared with a 'monolith', one large application. Teams 'move to microservices' or 'break the monolith into microservices'. Each microservice can be deployed and scaled on its own, but the whole system becomes harder to debug.

Example sentences

  1. We split the monolith into six microservices over two years.

  2. With microservices, one slow service can affect the whole checkout flow.

Common collocations

  • microservices architecture
  • move to microservices
  • break into microservices
  • a microservice
  • architectureThe high-level structure of a software system: its main parts, how they communicate with each other and the key technical decisions behind them.
  • scalableAble to handle more users, data or traffic by adding resources, without a complete redesign and without becoming much slower.
  • APIShort for application programming interface: a set of rules that lets one program ask another program for data or actions in a fixed, documented way.
  • trade-offA situation where getting more of one good thing means accepting less of another, such as speed versus accuracy or simplicity versus flexibility.
  • tech stackThe set of programming languages, frameworks, databases and tools that a team uses to build and run a product.

More terms: Architecture, Design Patterns and Graphics

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