Book: Monolith to Microservices: Evolutionary Patterns to Transform Your Monolith

Book: Monolith to Microservices: Evolutionary Patterns to Transform Your Monolith

The companion book for popular Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems book

Published on Sunday, May 15, 2022

Monolith to Microservices: Evolutionary Patterns to Transform Your Monolith by Sam Newman is a companion book for Building Microservices: Designing Fine-Grained Systems. Sam focuses on decomposing monoliths and greatly expands a few chapters from the original book.

The first book covered everything from the introduction of microservices to the most common patterns (and antipatterns). It ended on how to organize companies trying to embrace change in organizational structures. Although pragmatic, I see the first book more as an introduction, something to get you going on the microservices journey, than the actual "how-to." The new book is more practical and details the most common journey - transforming monolithic architecture into microservices. The book is a great read, even if you have experience with microservices or if you don't work with a monolith, like transforming SOA (in the broader sense) into microservices.

I have found the book practical, short, but dense. Like the original, the book is technology agnostic; however, there are opinionated (but balanced) comparisons of the current technologies in the area. The book clearly shows the benefits and drawbacks and leaves open questions for new technologies like serverless.

Most people, including myself, found most interesting technical chapters, 3rd chapter - Splitting The Monolith and the 4th chapter - Decomposing The Database.

Who is this book for?
For anyone who has read the original book. Even with the 2nd edition of Building Microservices, this book, in my opinion, is still 'required reading' for any developer, not just the one entering the world of microservices.