Are microservices just small services?

[#1]

If microservices were just small services, there wouldn’t be much need to invent a word for them, and they would not merit the level of discussion they receive. What is it that makes microservices different and important? I think the important characteristic of microservices is that they are implementation components of a larger application. I recently wrote a blog post on the topic and would be interested in your feedback.

[ceber]

I tend to agree. When I first read of the idea it was a bit before they were called microservices, and it was very much about breaking applications into smaller manageable bits. Those bits should be independently evolvable, so you had to have a good boundary. Once you did that it seemed an obvious step to make them independently deployable, so you could scale different bits differently if you desired, etc. But the big thing was not, at the time, about building services for other applications to consume.

[Former Community Member]

I think the key feature to micro services pattern is decentralization (infrastructure, governance, development etc).

Best practices of service modeling should be followed regardless of micro services.