mca blog

it doesn't matter if your service is "micro" or "oriented", if it's tightly coupled -- especially if your service is on the Web -- you're going to be stuck nursing your service (and all it's consumers) through lots of pain every time each little change happens (addresses, operations, arguments, process-flow). and that's just needless pain. needless for you and for anyone attempting to consume it.

tight coupling is trouble

tight coupling to any external component or service -- what i call a fatal dependency -- is big trouble. you don't want it. run away. how do you know if you have a fatal dependency? if some service or component you use changes and your code breaks -- that's fatal. it doesn't matter what code framework, software pattern, or architectural style you are using -- breakage is fatal -- stop it.

the circuit

you can stave off fatalities by wrapping calls to dependents in what Nygaard calls in his book Release It! a Circuit Breaker but that requires you also have either 1) an alternate service provider (or set of them) or, 2) you write your code such that the unavailable dependency doesn't mean your code is essentially unusable ("Sorry, our bank is unable to perform deposits today."). and the Circuit Breaker pattern is not meant for use when services introduce breaking changes anyway -- it's for cases when the dependent service is temporarily unavailable.

a promise

you're much better off using services that make a promise to their consumers that any changes to that service will be non-breaking. IOW, changes to the interface will be only additive. no existing operations, arguments or process-flows will be taken away. this is not really hard to do -- except that existing tooling (code editors, build-tools, and testing platforms) make it really easy break that promise!

there are lots of refactoring tools that make it hard to break existing code, but not many focus on making it hard to break existing public interfaces. and it's rare to see testing tools that go 'red' when a public interface changes even though they are great at catching changes in private function signatures. bummer.

so you want to use services that keep the "no breaking changes" pledge, right? that means you also want to deploy services that make that pledge, too.

honoring the pledge

but how do you honor this "no breaking changes" pledge and still update your service with new features and bug fixes? it turns out that isn't very difficult -- it just takes some discipline.

here's a quick checklist for implementing the pledge:

promise operations, not addresses

service providers SHOULD promise to support a named operation (shoppingCartCheckOut, computeTax, findCustomer) instead of promising exact addresses for those operations (http://myservice.example.org/findCustomer). on the Web you can do that using properties like rel or name or id that have predetermined values that are well-documented. when this happens, clients can "memorize" the name instead of the address.

promise message formats, not object serializations

object models are bound to change -- and change often for new services. trying to get all your service consumers to learn and track all your object model changes is just plain wrong. and, even if you wanted all consumers to keep up with your team's model changes, that means your feature velocity is tied to the slowest consumer in your ecosystem - blech! instead, promise generic message formats that don't require an understanding of object models. formats like VoiceXML and Collection+JSON are specifically designed to support this kind of promise. HTML, Atom, and other formats can be used in a way that maintains this promise, too. clients can now "bind" for the messgae format, not the object model -- changes to the model on the service don't leak out to the consumer. when this happens, adding new data elements in the response will not break clients.

promise transitions, not functions

service providers SHOULD treat all public interface operations as message-based transitions, not fixed functions with arguments. that means you need to give up on the classic RPC-style implementation patterns so many tools lead you into. instead, publish operations that pass messages (using registered formats like application/x-form-urlencoded) that contain the arguments currently needed for that operation. when this happens, clients only need to "memorize" the argument names (all pre-defined in well-written documentation) and then pay attention to the transition details that are supplied in service responses. some "old skool" peeps call these transition details FORMs, but it doesn't matter what you call them as long as you promise to use them.

promise dynamic process-flows, not static execution chains

serivces SHOULD NOT promised fixed-path workflows ("I promise you will always execute steps X then A, then Q, then F, then be done."). this just leads consumers to hard code that nonsense into their app and break when you want to modify the workflow due to new business processes within the service. instead, services SHOULD promise a operation identifiers (see above) along with a limited set of process-flow identifiers (start, next, previous, restart, cancel, done) that work with any process-flow that you need to support. when this happens clients only need to "memorize" the generic process-flow keywords and can be coded to act accordingly.

not complicated, just hard work

you'll note that all four of the above promises are not complicated -- and certainly not complex. but they do represent some hard work. it's a bummer that tooling doesn't make these kinds of promises easy. in fact, most tools do the opposite. they make address-based, object-serialization with fixed argument functions and static execution chain easy -- in some tools these are the defaults and you just need to press "build and deploy" to get it all working. BAM!

so, yeah. this job is not so easy. that's why you need to be diligent and disciplined for this kind of work.

eliminating dependencies

and -- back to the original point here -- decoupling addresses, operations, arguments, and process-flow means you eliminate lots of fatal dependencies in your system. it is now safer to make changes in components without so much worry about unexpected side-effects. and this will be a big deal for all you microservice fans out there because deploying dozens of independent services explodes your interface-to-operation ratio and it's just brutal to do that with tightly-coupled interfaces that fail to support theses promises inherent in a loosely-coupled implementation.

for the win

so, do not fear. whether you are a "microservice" lover or a "service-oriented" fan, you'll do fine as long as your make and keep these four promises. and, if you're a consumer of services, you now have some clear measures on whether the serivce you are about to "bind" to will result in fatalities in your system.