LOGANATHAN VELSAMY

It still surprises me just how many times I come across misconceptions around Micro Services and APIs. Often hearing phrases like micro services are fine grained web services or API is themselves are equivalent to micro services. These all sort of show fundamental misconceptions under the covers. So, I've written this just to really break that out and explain about what the key differences are in those two concepts. What is an API? An API, fundamentally Application Programming Interface, that is an interface. It's a way of making requests into a component. So it's the route that you go in to make those requests. In modern use that typically means a REST API, that's a call made using HTTP protocol using JSON data as the payload. What are Micro Services? So let's ensure we also have a clear crisp definition on what a micro service architecture really is. Micro-Services architecture is about breaking down large silo applications into smalle...

What is a micro service? Small, individually, independently deployable application components that are self-contained and exposed through lightweight http based APIs. Here the independence of the of those components is really important because it has lot of ramifications in terms of how manage large-scale deployments of this architecture. Some people may say micros services are contrary to service oriented architecture. Actually, that's not true, Micro services are extension or evolution of service oriented architecture. The same principles still hold true but then it fixes lots of problems that were there in the service oriented architecture like large ESBs (Enterprise service bus), unwieldy configurations and scalability issues. It breaks that down into small reusable components that now you can scale individually or you can manage individually, so it gives lot more flexibility. Why IT industry has moving towards Micro Services? Well, obviously Agile and Scrum are big factor in t...