Monolith vs. Microservices: Which architecture should you choose for your application?
Table of contents The choice of software architecture is a crucial decision when designing an application. It has a direct impact on its maintainability, scalability and performance. Two approaches are frequently opposed: monolithic architecture and microservices architecture. A monolith is a stand-alone application combining all functionalities in a single block. Simple to develop and deploy, this approach nevertheless reaches its limits on complex projects requiring high scalability. In contrast, microservices break down functionalities into independent services that communicate via APIs. This architecture offers greater flexibility and enables each service to be scaled, at the cost of increased complexity. So how do you choose between monoliths and microservices? What are the advantages, disadvantages and decision criteria? That's what we're going to look at in this article, illustrated by concrete examples. What is a monolithic architecture? A monolithic architecture consists in developing an application as a single unit where all functionalities are tightly coupled. The application is designed as a single, autonomous and independent block. In concrete terms, a monolith brings together within a single code base: Business logic Data access User interfaces Calls to other applications (e.g., [...])