What Does Microservice Architecture Actually Mean?

When we talk about Scan & Go and the Snabble Self-Checkout Cloud, various buzzwords often come up. One of them is our microservice architecture.

The fact that our software has been built on the basis of a modern microservice architecture is one of the great advantages of the Snabble Cloud Platform over other providers. But what does that actually mean exactly? What are microservices and why do we use this form of architecture?

What Are Microservices?

Microservices or microservices architecture is a software development methodology that structures an application as a combined collection of services. These services work together to form an entire application. Microservices are loosely coupled. This means that they can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.

Each service communicates with other services via standardized application programming interfaces (APIs), so they can be written in different languages or on different technologies. This is completely different from systems built as monolithic structures, where services are inextricably linked and can only scale together.

Since each service has only limited, usually singular functionality, both the size and the complexity are much smaller. The term microservice is derived from this discrete functionality.

By decomposing the application into individual services that implement specific functions, microservices offer modern developers the ability to design highly scalable, flexible applications.

Why Microservices?

Microservices are becoming increasingly popular because their modular properties lead to flexibility, scalability and reduced development effort. In this context, cloud platforms enable the scaling of microservices and functions. Another advantage is the resulting modularity: Individual microservices can be customized, exchanged or assembled differently.

Snabble also relies on these advantages and is thus able to implement pilots in the Snabble app in a very short time.