4 ms·

I've taken the approach of building the monolith first with an architecture that allows me to easily pull parts of it out into services when I hit constraints a

I've taken the approach of building the monolith first with an architecture that allows me to easily pull parts of it out into services when I hit constraints and need that scalability.

87zuhjkas 7y ago
How?
- shijie 7y ago
  Elixir and Phoenix. The contexts pattern used in Phoenix is the most modular, easily microserviced way of structuring apps I’ve ever used. I slapped myself on the forehead when I first saw it. Duh. It’s really fantastic. Highly recommend
  - bschwindHN 7y ago
    Do you have a good reference link to learn more about what you're talking about?
    - pdimitar 7y ago
      Official source: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/contexts.html https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/contexts.html A video: https://elixircasts.io/phoenix-contexts https://elixircasts.io/phoenix-contexts
- theptip 7y ago
  If you push to keep your code organized into modules with simple function APIs, and make sure that code outside your modules doesn't use the package internals directly, then your function APIs can be easily extracted into a REST/gRPC call, and the only thing that changes (to the first approximation) is your internal service (function) calls become external service (api) calls. Obviously you now need to add an API client layer but in terms of code organization, if your packages are cleanly separated then you've done a lot of the work already. (Transactions being the obvious piece that you'll often have to rethink when crossing a service boundary). The advantage of this approach is that it's much easier to refactor your internal "services" when they are just packages, than it is to refactor microservices after you've extracted them and set them free (since upgrading microservice APIs requires more coordination and you can't upgrade clients and servers all in one go, as you often can inside the same codebase).
  - mipmap04 7y ago
    This is exactly it.
  - karmakaze 7y ago
    I've been there. This only seems to 'work'--until you try to raise throughput/reliability and lower errors/latency. What ends up happening is that the module boundaries that made sense in a monolith don't make sense as microservices when communications are allowed to fail. Typically the modules are the source-of-truth for some concern with consumers layered above it. This is the worst pattern with microservices where a synchronous request has to go through several layers to a bottom-level service. With microservices you want to serve requests from self-contained slices of information that are updated asynchronously. The boundaries are then not central models but rather one part of a workflow.
    - diveanon 7y ago
      Or you can do poor man's microservices and use the same monolith with different production flags to load balance it. Keep all your code in one repo, deploy that codebase to multiple servers, but have it acting in different capacities. 1 email server, 5 app servers dishing out html, 2 api servers Etc It works very well and was able to handle spikes of traffic during super bowl ads without any problems.
      - bitterchicken 7y ago
        This is the biggest favor you can do for yourself. The developer experience is as easy as production without descending into container induced madness.
        diveanon 7y ago
        Testing is a breeze too because you are using the same tools across the board. I don't know why it fell out of fashion, but for your average web app it is the gold standard imo.
- pan69 7y ago
  Service Oriented Monolith. I.e. you can organise a monolith in pretty much the same way you would organise a micro service architecture.
  - maitredusoi 7y ago
    "Service Oriented Monolith", I'm loving it ! ;)
  - diveanon 7y ago
    Bingo. A properly organized codebase scales very well when partitioned into services. It is my default approach for all new projects for the last 10 years or so.
- xjlin0 7y ago
  https://medium.com/@dan_manges/the-modular-monolith-rails-architecture-fb1023826fc4 https://medium.com/@dan_manges/the-modular-monolith-rails-ar... His talk was pretty cool and helpful if you want to split monolith!
diveanon 7y ago
This is the approach we used at a certain budget shaving startup and it worked very well. The boosts to dev speed from a monolith / monorepo over a more "scalable" approach are huge and allow you to focus on business problems instead of self imposed tech challenges.

I've taken the approach of building the monolith first with an architecture that allows me to easily pull parts of it out into services when I hit constraints and need that scalability.

87zuhjkas 7y ago

How?

shijie 7y ago
Elixir and Phoenix. The contexts pattern used in Phoenix is the most modular, easily microserviced way of structuring apps I’ve ever used. I slapped myself on the forehead when I first saw it. Duh. It’s really fantastic. Highly recommend
- bschwindHN 7y ago
  Do you have a good reference link to learn more about what you're talking about?
  - pdimitar 7y ago
    Official source: https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/contexts.html https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/contexts.html A video: https://elixircasts.io/phoenix-contexts https://elixircasts.io/phoenix-contexts
theptip 7y ago
If you push to keep your code organized into modules with simple function APIs, and make sure that code outside your modules doesn't use the package internals directly, then your function APIs can be easily extracted into a REST/gRPC call, and the only thing that changes (to the first approximation) is your internal service (function) calls become external service (api) calls. Obviously you now need to add an API client layer but in terms of code organization, if your packages are cleanly separated then you've done a lot of the work already. (Transactions being the obvious piece that you'll often have to rethink when crossing a service boundary). The advantage of this approach is that it's much easier to refactor your internal "services" when they are just packages, than it is to refactor microservices after you've extracted them and set them free (since upgrading microservice APIs requires more coordination and you can't upgrade clients and servers all in one go, as you often can inside the same codebase).
- mipmap04 7y ago
  This is exactly it.
- karmakaze 7y ago
  I've been there. This only seems to 'work'--until you try to raise throughput/reliability and lower errors/latency. What ends up happening is that the module boundaries that made sense in a monolith don't make sense as microservices when communications are allowed to fail. Typically the modules are the source-of-truth for some concern with consumers layered above it. This is the worst pattern with microservices where a synchronous request has to go through several layers to a bottom-level service. With microservices you want to serve requests from self-contained slices of information that are updated asynchronously. The boundaries are then not central models but rather one part of a workflow.
  - diveanon 7y ago
    Or you can do poor man's microservices and use the same monolith with different production flags to load balance it. Keep all your code in one repo, deploy that codebase to multiple servers, but have it acting in different capacities. 1 email server, 5 app servers dishing out html, 2 api servers Etc It works very well and was able to handle spikes of traffic during super bowl ads without any problems.
    - bitterchicken 7y ago
      This is the biggest favor you can do for yourself. The developer experience is as easy as production without descending into container induced madness.
      - diveanon 7y ago
        Testing is a breeze too because you are using the same tools across the board. I don't know why it fell out of fashion, but for your average web app it is the gold standard imo.
pan69 7y ago
Service Oriented Monolith. I.e. you can organise a monolith in pretty much the same way you would organise a micro service architecture.
- maitredusoi 7y ago
  "Service Oriented Monolith", I'm loving it ! ;)
- diveanon 7y ago
  Bingo. A properly organized codebase scales very well when partitioned into services. It is my default approach for all new projects for the last 10 years or so.
xjlin0 7y ago
https://medium.com/@dan_manges/the-modular-monolith-rails-architecture-fb1023826fc4 https://medium.com/@dan_manges/the-modular-monolith-rails-ar... His talk was pretty cool and helpful if you want to split monolith!

diveanon 7y ago

This is the approach we used at a certain budget shaving startup and it worked very well. The boosts to dev speed from a monolith / monorepo over a more "scalable" approach are huge and allow you to focus on business problems instead of self imposed tech challenges.