5 mistakes developers make when working with microservices

Petro Krasnomovets
By Petro Krasnomovets,
25th August |
30

Developers often make some mistakes when working with microservices. They are inherent in both beginners and experienced specialists. However, all these mistakes are united by one feature — they can be avoided. Consider 5 common mistakes.

When working on large projects, it is very important to stick to practical solutions. They help to simplify the development process and increase its efficiency. To do this, the project must be divided into autonomous parts and then linked together. The modular architecture of IT solutions allows you to bring each semantic part of the project into separate code. All of these elements are capable of receiving and sending data in a specific format. Therefore, they can integrate into a single whole and manage each other, which is very convenient.

1. Incorrect structuring of the project when switching from a monolith

If you have a monolithic project of an IT solution, there may be difficulties when switching to working with microservices. Inexperienced developers sometimes do not understand how to divide services. Therefore, many people begin to split the project into top-level objects of the model. With further work, developers come to understand that the system should be further simplified — merge multiple objects from the domain scope into large blocks. This helps to avoid a situation where there are unnecessary calls to third-party services when working.

How to fix this problem? First of all, transferring a monolith to microservices, prerequisites must be met. You don’t need to implement microservices if you’re not ready.

To begin with, you need to provide full automation of servers and infrastructure components, and continuous delivery containers for publishing code to servers. It is also important to have a monitoring infrastructure in place to monitor the health of your services.

2. Microservices that run in the same container

In a situation where a developer creates a project with microservices from scratch, there are difficulties. For example, their work in a container. To avoid errors, you need to provide microservices with fully isolated operations in their environment that you can scale yourself and deploy independently in your CD/CI. In addition, running microservices in their environment should be able to be automatically discovered by other microservices. All this allows us to ensure the necessary fault tolerance and competitiveness in comparison with the projects of competitors.

3. Microservices are written in the same programming language

When working with microservices, we make a project from small parts. The modules are combined into a single whole by specially written business logic. Despite integration into the overall system, all units are autonomous. Therefore, the developer has the opportunity to write each module in the language that is suitable for solving a specific task. This will allow you to best develop the tasks set, starting from the capabilities of the specific tools that you use during development. You don’t have to use one language and be artificially dependent on it. Microservices give block developers the necessary independence from each other.

4. Use the same design pattern in each microservice

It’s important to remember that there cannot be a single template for all microservices. It’s essential to identify the tasks you’ll encounter regularly and create templates that are easy to adapt and use. Developers should experiment and learn in finding better practical solutions. Very important to immediately find tools for correct operation, otherwise, dependence on any templates can significantly limit the functionality of the IT solution.

5. Neglect of testing

To maintain the functionality and responsiveness of microservices, it’s essential not only to choose the right tools to create individual blocks but to identify the appropriate business pattern of interactions. It’s equally significant to test the blocks and pay special attention to this. Several verification procedures need to be carried out: 

  • Testing of individual parts of the class, and functions.
  • Testing of project components and API.
  • Testing of integrated components — database cache, search modules, external services.
  • Testing the health contract.
  • End-to-end testing of microservice relationships with other microservices.

It’s important to ensure that all the blocks of a single whole are consistent with each other. Success lies in optimizing the development process and creating a solution that will allow the IT solution to evolve and remain competitive.