{ TECH BLOG }

Microservices architecture remains the dominant pattern for building scalable enterprise applications. With the maturity of container orchestration (Kubernetes, ECS), service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd), and serverless computing, microservices in 2026 are more accessible and manageable than ever.

However, the industry has also learned hard lessons about when NOT to use microservices. The "monolith-first" approach has gained traction, where teams start with a well-structured monolith and extract services only when clear domain boundaries and scaling needs emerge.

• Domain-Driven Design (DDD) — Define service boundaries using bounded contexts. Each service owns its domain logic and data.
• Single Responsibility — Each service does one thing well. Avoid "God services" that handle too many concerns.
• Database per Service — Each service manages its own data store. No shared databases.
• API-First Design — Define service contracts (OpenAPI, gRPC proto files) before implementation.
• Event-Driven Communication — Use asynchronous messaging (SQS, SNS, EventBridge) for inter-service communication. Reserve synchronous calls for real-time queries.

// Express + TypeScript microservice structure
src/
  controllers/    // HTTP handlers
  services/       // Business logic
  repositories/   // Data access
  events/         // Event publishers/consumers
  middleware/     // Auth, logging, error handling
  config/        // Environment-specific configuration
  health/        // Health check endpoints
  index.ts       // Application entry point

Key patterns: Use dependency injection (tsyringe or InversifyJS), implement circuit breakers (opossum), add distributed tracing (OpenTelemetry), and use structured logging (pino or winston) with correlation IDs.

• ECS Fargate / EKS — Container orchestration without managing servers
• API Gateway — Centralized API management, rate limiting, and authentication
• SQS + SNS — Message queues and pub/sub for async communication
• EventBridge — Event bus for event-driven architectures
• DynamoDB / Aurora — Managed databases with auto-scaling
• CloudWatch + X-Ray — Monitoring, logging, and distributed tracing

• Distributed Monolith — Services that are tightly coupled and must be deployed together defeat the purpose
• Chatty Services — Excessive synchronous inter-service calls create latency and fragility
• Shared Databases — Multiple services reading/writing to the same database creates hidden coupling
• Premature Decomposition — Splitting into microservices before understanding domain boundaries leads to wrong service cuts