In today's fast-paced software development landscape, microservices have emerged as a popular architectural pattern. But what exactly are microservices? In a nutshell, microservices are a way of structuring an application as a collection of loosely coupled, fine-grained services that communicate through lightweight protocols. This architectural style enables teams to develop and deploy services independently, offering flexibility and scalability to the software development process.
The fundamental idea behind microservices is to break down an application into smaller, self-contained services, each responsible for a specific business capability. Let's take the example of an online marketplace application. Instead of treating the entire application as a monolithic entity, microservices architecture allows us to identify distinct features like search, shopping cart, payments, and order history as independent services. These services can be developed and maintained separately, promoting code modularity and enhancing overall system agility.