Software Architect's Handbook

Autonomous and independently deployable services

An application using a microservice architecture consists of a system of autonomous services. The services should be loosely coupled, interacting through their well-defined interfaces and not dependent on the implementation of the service.

This allows the implementation of services to change and evolve independently of the other services. As long as the service interface is unchanged, modifying a microservice is less likely to require changes to other parts of the application.

Autonomous services are independently deployable, making it easier to deploy them to production. A microservice architecture enables continuous deployment because it is easier to release updates to the services. If a ...