Understanding Monolith vs Microservices Architectures

Understanding the differences between monolithic and microservices architectures can be challenging. This article breaks down these complex concepts into simpler terms, inspired by lessons from Akshay Saini’s Namaste NodeJs course, making them accessible to college students and emerging developers alike.

Monolith:

When we refer to a monolithic application, we mean that the entire application is maintained as a single project.

Consider a web application like abc.com, which includes different types of code for the frontend, backend, and database connectivity. In a monolithic application, all these components are maintained within a single project and share the same codebase. Typically, a monolithic application is developed using a single programming language, which means that you need to we need to use the same coding language for the entire project.

Microservices:

Let’s take the same example as above(abc.com)

In this approach, we create separate projects for the frontend, backend, and database connectivity. Each project, also called as service, is developed and maintained independently. This means that different teams can be responsible for different services, potentially speeding up development as they can work in parallel without interfering with each other’s code.

These services communicate with each other through APIs, allowing them to exchange data and functionality easily. One of the biggest advantages of microservices is the flexibility in technology choice—each service can be written in the most appropriate programming language and framework for its needs. For example, the frontend might be built with ReactJS while the backend could be implemented in Java.

Some Important Points:

• In a monolithic application, even a small feature update in the frontend requires redeploying the entire application, including the backend and databases. In contrast, with microservices, you can update and deploy just the frontend independently.

• If there is a bug in a monolithic application, it might cause the entire application to crash. However, in a microservices architecture, only the specific service affected by the bug is impacted.

• Redesigning a part of a monolithic application, such as the frontend, can be challenging for developers. In microservices, developers find it easier to redesign any part of the application since each service is independent.