Microservices Glossary

Browse 16 microservices terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

16 Microservices Terms

API Composition
A pattern where a service (or API gateway) queries multiple microservices and combines the results into a single response. Replaces cross-service database...
API Gateway
API Gateway is a server that acts as the single entry point for all client requests to a backend system composed of multiple microservices. Instead of clients...
API Gateway Pattern
A pattern where a single entry point (the gateway) handles cross-cutting concerns for all backend services: authentication, rate limiting, request routing,...
Bounded Context
A central DDD concept defining an explicit boundary within which a particular domain model applies. The same real-world concept (e.g., 'Customer') can have...
Circuit Breaker
A design pattern that prevents an application from repeatedly trying to execute an operation that's likely to fail, giving the failing service time to recover....
Contract Testing
A testing approach where API consumers and providers independently verify that they conform to a shared contract (expected request/response format). Tools like...
Cross-Service
Describing workflows, dependencies, or changes that involve multiple services working together instead of remaining inside one service boundary. Cross-service...
distributed tracing
A method of tracking requests as they propagate through distributed systems by assigning each request a unique trace ID that follows it across service...
Micro Frontend
An architectural pattern that decomposes a web frontend into independently developed, deployed, and loaded feature slices — each owned by a separate team —...
Microservice Hell
A painful distributed architecture state where service boundaries, ownership, networking, and observability multiply complexity faster than the organization...
Saga
A pattern for managing distributed transactions across multiple services without a global two-phase commit. A saga breaks a transaction into a sequence of...
Service
A self-contained unit of functionality — either a standalone network process (as in microservices) or an application-layer class that encapsulates business...
Service Discovery
The mechanism by which services in a distributed system automatically find and connect to each other without hardcoded addresses. Can be client-side (Consul,...
service mesh
A dedicated infrastructure layer that handles service-to-service communication in microservice architectures, implemented as a network of lightweight proxies...
Service Mesh
A dedicated infrastructure layer for managing service-to-service communication in a microservice architecture, handling load balancing, encryption,...
Service Registry
A centralized or distributed catalog (such as Consul, Eureka, or etcd) where microservices register their network location on startup and query to discover...

Related Topics