Find service boundaries
Given an e-commerce monolith (users, catalog, orders, payments), split it into 4-6 services and justify each boundary in one sentence.
Backend & Runtime / Knowledge library
Microservices Architecture
an app style using small independent services
Why learn Microservices Architecture?
It helps teams ship, scale, and recover parts of a system independently instead of redeploying a single large application.
Where it came from
Microservices evolved from SOA ideas, with stronger focus on small deployable units. Around 2011, the term 'microservices' was discussed at software architecture workshops. The 2014 Fowler/Lewis article helped standardize the term and core principles. Containers and Kubernetes accelerated adoption by simplifying packaging and deployment.
- Microservices evolved from SOA ideas, with stronger focus on small deployable units.
- Around 2011, the term 'microservices' was discussed at software architecture workshops.
- The 2014 Fowler/Lewis article helped standardize the term and core principles.
- Containers and Kubernetes accelerated adoption by simplifying packaging and deployment.
Build your understanding
Work through these exercises in order. Try the task before opening a reference.
- Given an e-commerce monolith (users, catalog, orders, payments), split it into 4-6 services and justify each boundary in one sentence.
- Model checkout with REST for command intake and events for order/payment updates. Include failure paths and retries.
- Add circuit breaker, timeout, retry, and idempotency strategy for an Orders service calling Payments. Define metrics and alerts.
- Design a saga for order creation across Orders, Inventory, and Payments with compensating actions and event schema.
- Create a release checklist for one microservice: contract testing, tracing, canary rollout, rollback trigger, and SLO guardrails.
More ways to practice
Design synchronous + async flows
Model checkout with REST for command intake and events for order/payment updates. Include failure paths and retries.
Resilience implementation plan
Add circuit breaker, timeout, retry, and idempotency strategy for an Orders service calling Payments. Define metrics and alerts.
Data consistency without 2PC
Design a saga for order creation across Orders, Inventory, and Payments with compensating actions and event schema.
Production hardening checklist
Create a release checklist for one microservice: contract testing, tracing, canary rollout, rollback trigger, and SLO guardrails.
Documentation and sources
- Martin Fowler: Microservices (martinfowler.com)
- microservices.io patterns (microservices.io)
- The Twelve-Factor App (12factor.net)
- Kubernetes Concepts (kubernetes.io)
- Azure Microservices Architecture Guide (learn.microsoft.com)
Catalog research notes
- Platform engineering teams now provide microservice templates and golden paths.
- Ambient service mesh modes are reducing sidecar overhead in production clusters.
- OpenTelemetry tracing is becoming a default requirement for service-to-service calls.
- Event-driven contracts (Kafka/NATS) are used more often alongside REST APIs.
- Cost and ops pressure is driving teams to merge overly small services.