Microservices

Over the past 10 years the ways we build and deliver applications has changed significantly. It seems like much of this change has happened overnight but don’t worry, it is perfectly normal to look up and feel disoriented in the 2015 deployment landscape.

This article compares the deployment in 2005 with “modern” deployment so that all the new terms and techniques will make sense. Forewarning: My background is primarily Java / JVM so I will use that terminology but try to make the ideas polyglot.

Right now there is a ton of hype and pushback around Microservices. Most of the current debate revolves around when Microservices make sense with smart people arguing all across the spectrum. As with all architectural topics the right answer is “it depends” so you should never blindly chose Microservices without understanding your goals and how they align with Microservices.

Using the open source WebJars project as an example I’d like to walk through a process of deciding where to use Microservices and then refactor part of the webjars.org app to a Microservice. First a little background on WebJars… WebJars are JavaScript & CSS libraries packaged into Jar files and published on Maven Central for easy consumption by JVM build tools. The webjars.org site is a Play Framework + Scala app that provides search, publishing, and file service for the jsDelivr CDN.