Companies worldwide have used the microservice architecture model so widely that it has almost become a default way of software development. There are many companies having tens, hundreds, and even thousands of microservices at their disposal.

So, what exactly is the microservice model?

The microservice architecture model is organizing an application as a collection of services, called microservices, each of which is further responsible for a certain part of application logic, usually defined by a particular business capability.

As an example, consider an online marketplace application. The application may have multiple features, including search, a shopping cart, payments, order history, and much more. Each feature can be so different and complex on its own that it could be developed and maintained by a separate team – like search and payments in our example. In the microservice architecture model, each component would be an independent...

In order to understand the motivation behind using the microservice architecture, it is very important to see the opposite approach – when the application is built and executed as a single program. Such applications are called monolithic applications or monoliths.

Monolithic architecture is, in most ways, the simplest model to implement since it does not involve splitting the application into multiple parts that need to coordinate with each other. This can provide you with major advantages in many cases, such as the following:

• Application logic is still loosely defined: It is very common that parts of the application or the entire system go through major structural or logical changes, especially at the very early stages of development. This might be caused by a sudden change of requirements, priorities, changes in the business model, or a different approach to development. In such cases, the ability to make quick changes to the...

In order to understand how to get the best results from using microservices and which issues to be aware of, let’s review the pros and cons of the microservice model.

Benefits of microservices

As previously described, different application components may have fundamentally different requirements and, at certain points, diverge so much that it would be beneficial to separate them. In this case, microservice architecture provides a clear solution by decoupling the parts of the system.

Microservices provide the following benefits to developers:

• Faster compilation and build time: Faster build and compilation time may play a key role in speeding up all development processes.
• Faster deployments, smaller deployable size: When each part of the system is deployed separately, the deployable size can get so significantly smaller that individual deployments can take just a fraction of the time compared to monolithic applications...

We have covered the benefits and common issues of microservices, providing a good overview of the applicability of using the microservice architecture model in an application. Let’s summarize the key points of using the microservice model, which are the following:

• Don’t introduce microservices too early: Don’t use the microservice architecture too early if the product is loosely defined or could go through significant changes. Even when developers know the exact purpose of the system, there are high chances of various changes in the early stages of the development process. Starting from a monolithic application – and splitting it over time once there are clearly defined business capabilities and boundaries – helps reduce the amount of work and establish the right interfaces between the components.
• No size fits all: Each company is unique and the final decision should depend on many factors, including...

Over the last decade, the Go programming language has become one of the most popular languages for application development. There have been many factors contributing to its success, including its simplicity, ease of writing network applications, and the ability to easily develop parallel and concurrent applications.

Additionally, the larger developer community has played a key role in raising its popularity across all types of developers. The Go community is welcoming to everybody, from people just starting their journeys into programming to seasoned experts with decades of experience building different types of applications.

The Go standard library provides a set of packages that can often be enough for building a complete web application or an entire service, sometimes without even requiring any external dependencies. Many developers have been fascinated by the ease of writing applications and tools performing network calls, data...

We have discussed the key aspects of the microservice development model, including the motivation to use it, the common benefits, and the possible challenges. You have learned that the microservice model brings many advantages, helping you achieve a higher degree of flexibility. It also comes with its own costs, which often include additional complexity and a lack of uniformness in the system. Microservice architecture requires you to think about these problems proactively in order to address them before they become big issues.

In the next chapter, we are going to start our journey into microservice development with the Go language. You will learn the important basics of the Go programming language and we will scaffold our microservices, which we are going to improve throughout the rest of the book.

To learn more about the topics that were covered in this chapter, take a look at the following resources:

• A collection of resources on microservice development: https://microservices.io
• Overview of the microservice architecture model: https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html