Microservices for Modern Commerce

Chapter 2. Introducing Microservices

Origins of Microservices

Although the term “Microservices” first rose to prominence in 2013, the concepts have been with us for decades.

1. Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new features.

2. Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.

3. Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.

Doug McIlroy, one of the founders of Unix and inventor of the Unix pipe, 1978

The software industry has long looked for ways to break up large monolithic applications into smaller more modular pieces with the goal of reducing complexity. From Unix pipes to dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) to object-oriented programming to service-oriented architecture (SOA), there have been many attempts.

It is only due to advances in computer science theory, organizational theory, software development methodology, and infrastructure that microservices has emerged as a credible alternative to building applications.

So what are microservices?

Introducing Microservices

Microservices are individual pieces of business functionality that are independently developed, deployed, and managed by a small team of people from ...