Everything becomes micro

In the previous section, we discovered that the eventual split into dedicated parts for the frontend and backend of an application may be quite useful. Staying on the backend, the rise of smaller services that need to be orchestrated and joined together can be observed across the industry in the form of so-called microservices.

From SOA to microservices

While the idea of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) is not new, what microservices brought to the table is freedom of choice. In the early 2000s, the term SOA was introduced to already try that out. However, for SOA, we saw a broad palette of requirements and constraints. From the communicating protocol and the discoverability of the API to the consuming applications, everything was either predetermined – or at least strongly recommended.

With the ultimate failure of SOA, the community tried to stay away from building too many services too quickly. In the end, it was not only about the constraints...