Mindreframer

Micro-Service Architecture

by Roman Heinrich

Baruco 2012: Micro-Service Architecture, by Fred George

SOA, service-oriented architectures, burst on the scene in the new millennium as the latest technology to support application growth. In concert with the Web, SOA ushered in new paradigms for structuring enterprise applications.

At the Forward Internet Group in London, we are implementing SOA in unusual ways. Rather than a few, business-related services being implemented per the original vision, we have developed systems made of myriads of very small, usually short-lived services. In this workshop, we will start by exploring the evolution of SOA implementations by the speaker. In particular, lessons learned from each implementation will be discussed, and re-application of these lessons on the next implementation. Challenges (and even failures) will be explicitly identified.

We will arrive at a model of the current systems: An environment of very small services that are loosely coupled into a complex system. We explore the demise of acceptance tests in this complex environment, and the clever replacement of business metrics in their stead.

Finally, we will conclude with the surprising programmer development process impacts of this architecture. Indeed, bedrock principles of Agile have been rendered unnecessary, something that equally surprised us.