Of monoliths and microservices: Adventures in structuring a web app
The US Digital Service is building a suite of tools to replace a large legacy application at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Knowing the complexity of the end state and enamored with microservices, the team was much too aggressive in breaking up the product. Shane Russell reflects on this experience, sharing advice and lessons learned on how and when to break up your web app.
| Talk Title | Of monoliths and microservices: Adventures in structuring a web app |
| Speakers | Shane Russell (United States Digital Service) |
| Conference | O’Reilly Fluent Conference |
| Conf Tag | The Web Platform in Practice |
| Location | San Jose, California |
| Date | June 20-22, 2017 |
| URL | Talk Page |
| Slides | Talk Slides |
| Video | |
There are good reasons to break up your web application into multiple libraries and deployable parts, but it may end up hurting more than it helps. The US Digital Service is building a suite of tools to replace a large legacy application at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Knowing the complexity of the end state and enamored with microservices, the team was much too aggressive in breaking up the Rails application into multiple deployable units and gems from the start. In hindsight, the team ended up paying a large overhead price. It would have probably been better to start with a monolith. Shane Russell reflects on this experience, sharing advice and lessons learned on how and when to break up your web app and digging into the specifics of the overhead incurred by their team for doing so. He also describes some of the benefits of breaking apart your application at the right time and offers techniques for doing it in a way that will have your team reaping the most benefits.
