Architecture

Is a shared database a good or bad idea when working in a large system that’s decomposed of many different services? Or should every service have its own database? My answer is yes and no, but it’s all about data ownership. YouTube Check out my YouTube channel, where I post all kinds of content accompanying my posts, including this video showing everything in this post. Monolith When working within a monolith and generally a single database, you can wrap all database calls within a transaction and not think too much about failures. If something fails, you roll back. You can get consistency… Read More »Shared Database between Services? Maybe!

Building resilient software systems can be difficult, especially when they are distributed. Executing a long-running business process or workflow that involves multiple different service boundaries requires a lot of resiliency. Everything needs to be available and functioning because if something fails mid-way through, you can be left in an inconsistent state. What’s a solution? Workflow orchestration and removing direct service to service communication and temporal coupling. YouTube Check out my YouTube channel, where I post all kinds of content accompanying my posts, including this video showing everything in this post. Workflow When working with a monolith and a single database, all database… Read More »Workflow Orchestration for Resilient Systems

Distributed tracing is great for observing how a request flows through a set of distributed services. However, it can also be used as a band-aid to mask a problem that you shouldn’t have. YouTube Check out my YouTube channel, where I post all kinds of content accompanying my posts, including this video showing everything in this post. Distributed Tracing So why is distributed tracing helpful? When you’re working within a Monolith, you generally have an entire request processed within the same process. This means if there is a failure of any sort, you can capture the entire stack trace. When you’re in… Read More »Distributed Tracing to discover a Distributed BIG BALL of MUD