What are Microservices - Intro

Microservices - What does it mean?

Googling microservices will present you with many definitions.

All of them essentially point to the same basic idea. However, we shall attempt at coming to a more holistic understanding of what the term really means.

The term "Microservices" is self-explanatory?

A lot of sources start their definitions with microservices being "small" services. Some put a limit on the LOC, while some claim that microservices should take only two weeks to develop. Needless to say, it's extremely difficult to come to a common consensus on how "micro" a service really needs to be, in fact the name overemphasizes size.

Grandpas say Martin Fowler - "The microservice architectural style is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API" (Microservices Guide by Martin Fowler). Adrian Cockcroft says that microservice architecture is a “service-oriented architecture composed of loosely coupled elements that have bounded contexts”.