Microservices

Microservices decompose monolithic applications into loosely coupled services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently. Each service typically owns its own database and communicates with other services through APIs. Benefits include independent deployment (change one service without redeploying the entire application), technology flexibility (each service can use different languages/frameworks), and scalability (scale only the services that need it). Challenges include distributed system complexity, service discovery, data consistency, and monitoring across services. Microservices work best with containerisation, CI/CD pipelines, and robust monitoring/observability.