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You don't need to build a distributed system for that. Just build the ShippingServiceLibrary, let others import the jar file (or whatever) and maintain a stable

You don't need to build a distributed system for that. Just build the ShippingServiceLibrary, let others import the jar file (or whatever) and maintain a stable interface. I wrote about this a couple of years ago in more detail, so I'll just reference that: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/microservices_for_the_grumpy_neckbeard.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2014/microservices_for_th... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227721 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8227721

andrewchambers 10y ago
I think people don't maintain discipline if it isn't forced. So its a round about way of forcing people to maintain boundaries, that wouldn't be needed much of the time if people had stricter development practices.
- threeseed 10y ago
  Exactly. Every single monolithic application I've seen has a utilities package that has classes shared amongst components. With micro services you could have different versions of those utilities in use which would not be possible in a monolithic app.
  - dahauns 10y ago
    > With micro services you could have different versions of those utilities in use which would not be possible in a monolithic app. You have no idea...:)
threeseed 10y ago
The point is that unless you use JVM hot reloading (not recommended in Production) you will need to take down your whole app to upgrade that JAR. Now what if your microservice was something minor like a black word filter. Is adding a swear word worthy of a potential outage ?
- rer 10y ago
  Is hot reloading that big of a problem?
  - betenoire 10y ago
    not for everyone
- nine_k 10y ago
  If you run multiple instances of your server and follow certain reasonable practices, you can take down old-version instances one by one and replace them with new-version instances, until you have upgraded the entire fleet. Alternatively, you can deploy the new version to many machines, test it, then make your load balancer direct the new traffic to the new instances, until all old instances are idle, and then take down these.
- benx 10y ago
  And in microservices you can just pick whatever stack you feel is the best for just that task
duaneb 10y ago
You certainly can do that. A little discussed benefit (or curse) of a microservice is maintaining an API (as opposed to ABI). Changes are slower and people put more thought into the interface as a discrete concern. I am curious if an ideal team would work better with a lib--I think so, but I'm not sure!

andrewchambers 10y ago

I think people don't maintain discipline if it isn't forced. So its a round about way of forcing people to maintain boundaries, that wouldn't be needed much of the time if people had stricter development practices.

threeseed 10y ago
Exactly. Every single monolithic application I've seen has a utilities package that has classes shared amongst components. With micro services you could have different versions of those utilities in use which would not be possible in a monolithic app.
- dahauns 10y ago
  > With micro services you could have different versions of those utilities in use which would not be possible in a monolithic app. You have no idea...:)

threeseed 10y ago

The point is that unless you use JVM hot reloading (not recommended in Production) you will need to take down your whole app to upgrade that JAR. Now what if your microservice was something minor like a black word filter. Is adding a swear word worthy of a potential outage ?

rer 10y ago
Is hot reloading that big of a problem?
- betenoire 10y ago
  not for everyone
nine_k 10y ago
If you run multiple instances of your server and follow certain reasonable practices, you can take down old-version instances one by one and replace them with new-version instances, until you have upgraded the entire fleet. Alternatively, you can deploy the new version to many machines, test it, then make your load balancer direct the new traffic to the new instances, until all old instances are idle, and then take down these.
benx 10y ago
And in microservices you can just pick whatever stack you feel is the best for just that task

duaneb 10y ago

You certainly can do that. A little discussed benefit (or curse) of a microservice is maintaining an API (as opposed to ABI). Changes are slower and people put more thought into the interface as a discrete concern. I am curious if an ideal team would work better with a lib--I think so, but I'm not sure!