The development world is increasingly embracing microservices as it makes the development process easier and quicker. Developers use microservices to build more substantial and more complex applications that are developed and managed as a combination of small services. These small services work together to provide the application a broad, extensive functionality.

Microservices are also referred to as “piece-by-piece” development methodology. Let’s dive into Java microservices, and how it can be deployed with AWS.

Microservices: An Overview

A microservice is an architectural style that develops an application as a combination of several sets of small services. Each service operates independently and runs its own process. These services communicate with each other and with clients using “messaging over HTTP” and other lightweight protocols.

In simple words, microservices can be considered as a type of service-oriented architecture applications developed as a collection of several smaller services, instead of an entire app as a whole.

Thus, in microservices, instead of having a monolithic application, you have various independent apps that function separately on their own. You can create these sub-applications using different programming languages, even different platforms.

By utilizing the microservices methodology, you can structure big, complicated applications to less complex mini-programs that run independently. These small programs are conglomerated to deliver the comprehensive functionality of a big, monolithic application.

In microservice developments, the need for a large team working on a massive monolithic project is eliminated. In the case of microservices development, small, agile teams work individually to develop the programs they are most comfortable working with.

All the programs developed are independently executed, scaled, and versioned. These services are programmed to interact with other microservices. They have unique names and URLs and are consistently available in case of failures.

Benefits of Microservices

Microservices offer a wide range of benefits, ranging from helping developers with coding to influencing the architecture. Here is how microservices can help you with application development.

Easy Development and Maintenance of Applications

The major advantage of microservices is its simplicity. Applications, when split into smaller, more composable fragments, become easier to build and maintain. Microservices also eases the process of managing codes by providing a separate chunk of codes, which otherwise would have been a tedious task to do.

Microservices also support the implementation of services using different programming languages, software environments, and databases. This flexibility enables you to deploy, rebuild, re-deploy, and manage each service independently.

For example, if a service allows too much memory or puts a significant load on the process, no other services will be affected, but the service responsible for the load itself.

Therefore, any problem occurring in one microservice will not affect the entire system, making it easy to compensate for the failure of a particular service.

Business-Oriented Orientation

Microservices help you build products, instead of projects. Microservice architectures enable teams to focus on prioritizing business functionality instead of sticking to writing glue code. Business teams need to stay organized around business capabilities, instead of technologies.

Programs developed using the microservice architecture are adaptable, and can be used in multiple contexts. Therefore, the same service can be reused in more than one business operation or business channel, depending upon the requirement. Microservice methodology also ensures each team member is responsible for a specific service, which promotes the development of smart, agile, and cross-functional teams.

Improved Speed and Productivity

The microservices architecture also enables you to counter the challenges of speed and productivity by disintegrating applications into smaller, manageable services that are faster and easier to develop. Different teams can work on different elements of a project without waiting for a team to finish its share of work. This architecture also comes in handy for fastening quality assurance as every microservice can be individually tested. Therefore, you can test the components which are already developed, and the programmers can work on developing other programs.

Flexible Technology and Easy Scalability

As mentioned earlier, each microservice can be written utilizing varied technology. This flexibility simplifies the process of selecting the most appropriate tech stack for a particular need of a service. The microservice architecture also enables decoupled services written in variable programming languages to coexist with other components.

It can also be helpful if you are looking to scale your product. Microservices allow you to seamlessly add new elements to the system, along with providing the ability to scale services individually from one another.

Cross-Functional, Autonomous Teams

If different teams working on a project are inefficient, microservices can be a blessing. Developing a huge monolith program can be a messy and complicated task, especially if you are working with divisions with extended teams around the globe.

Microservices provide developers with more independence for working autonomously, which helps in speeding up the process of decision making in smaller groups. Therefore, if the solution you are planning to develop is huge, consider utilizing the microservice architecture.

Java Microservices Frameworks

If you are developing using Java, you can use a plethora of microservices frameworks. However, the best ones include:

Spring Boot: Spring Boot is the best and most widely-used Java microservices framework. It works on top of languages for Aspect-Oriented Programming, Inversion of Control, and others.

Jersey: Another popular Java microservices framework, Jersey, is an open-source framework that supports JAX-RS APIs in Java. This framework is one of the easiest to use.

Swagger: Swagger is a microservices framework for Java that helps you with documenting API, along with providing you a development portal that enables you to test your APIs.

Apart from these, some other popular frameworks you can consider using are Dropwizard, Play Framework, Ninja Web Framework, Restlet, RestExpress, & Spark Framework.

How to Deploy Java Microservices to AWS?

If you are curious about how you can deploy Java microservices on Amazon Web Services (AWS), this piece of information can help. Check out the best recommendations for using Java microservices on AWS.

AWS Fargate (Amazon Elastic Container Service or Amazon ECS)

Since microservices don’t translate into containers, you can deploy a monolith application with microservices utilizing physical host or virtual machines. However, it is essential to acknowledge the working of containers and what they aim to do. You can deploy services as a set of containers that can commute with one another.

Amazon ECS helps you define your cluster, along with analyzing metrics to configure scalability. If you want to skip the hassle of provisioning, such as managing the cluster, type of instances, and deciding when to scale, you can rely on AWS Fargate. Not only will it take care of the provisioning for you, but it will also integrate with other services like IAM, AWS Elastic Container Registry, and Amazon CloudWatch.

Amazon EKS (Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes)

Amazon EKS is the “Kubernetes as a service” alternative on AWS and can come in handy if Amazon ECS cannot cover your requirements. If your deployment structure needs the Kubernetes engine, don’t worry as you are covered. Amazon EKS enables you to run containers representing microservices, along with grouping them via services and pods.

Amazon EKS also offers integration with several AWS services, including IAM, AWS App Mesh, etc.

AWS Lambda

If your business frowns upon you having your application running all the time, you can characterize your application as a set of serverless functions. Therefore, you can group them to display as an independent service.

AWS Lambda enables you to deploy functions that can run on demand when an event takes place. If you attach the functions to HTTP calls, you can develop an exceptional API that can cover your company objectives. One of the significant benefits of Lambda is that AWS charges for execution time only. AWS Lambda also supports seamless integration with AWS API Gateway, which helps you monitor and secure your API as per requirements.

Best Practices for Microservices

By now, you must have realized that shifting to microservices can be a major advantage for your business and development operations. They provide opportunities for greater reliability, increased scalability, and reduced costs.

However, you can encounter some challenges while using microservices as well; therefore, it is essential to follow some practices for seamless migration.

• All of your microservices should use their data store.
• The development and DevOps teams choose the database for all their services.
• When teams share a database, the chances of creating a monolithic service increases; thus, it is essential to be cautious and alert.

Wrapping It Up

Microservices have revolutionized the app development process and has helped distribute the cumbersome process of creating a monolithic program into small, individual mini-programs that can be programmed using different technologies, and that too on different platforms.

It also offers seamless scalability, which makes it an excellent choice for deploying in AWS. The best Java microservices frameworks include Spring Boot, Jersey, and Swagger. For deploying microservices in Java, you can use AWS Fargate, Amazon EKS, or Amazon Lambda as per your requirements.

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