Key Concepts
| # | Microservices Concept | Description | Pattern |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Microservice | Small, independently deployable business service | Decomposition Pattern |
| 2 | Service Decomposition | Break application into smaller business services | Decompose by Business Capability |
| 3 | API Gateway | Single entry point for client requests | API Gateway Pattern |
| 4 | Service Discovery | Dynamically finds available service instances | Service Discovery Pattern |
| 5 | Load Balancing | Distributes requests across service instances | Load Balancer Pattern |
| 6 | Service Communication | Enables communication between services | Remote Procedure Call Pattern |
| 7 | Asynchronous Communication | Services communicate without waiting for response | Messaging Pattern |
| 8 | Event-Driven Architecture | Services communicate through business events | Event-Driven Pattern |
| 9 | Database per Service | Each service owns its data | Database-per-Service Pattern |
| 10 | Shared Database | Multiple services share a database | Shared Database Pattern |
| 11 | Distributed Transaction | Transaction spans multiple services | Distributed Transaction Pattern |
| 12 | Saga | Manages transactions across multiple services | Saga Pattern |
| 13 | Saga Choreography | Services coordinate through events | Choreography Pattern |
| 14 | Saga Orchestration | Central coordinator manages the workflow | Orchestration Pattern |
| 15 | Circuit Breaker | Prevents repeated calls to failing services | Circuit Breaker Pattern |
| 16 | Retry | Reattempts failed operations | Retry Pattern |
| 17 | Timeout | Stops calls that take too long | Timeout Pattern |
| 18 | Bulkhead | Isolates failures between services | Bulkhead Pattern |
| 19 | Fallback | Provides alternative behavior when a service fails | Fallback Pattern |
| 20 | Rate Limiting | Controls the number of incoming requests | Rate Limiting Pattern |
| 21 | Caching | Stores frequently accessed data for faster retrieval | Cache-Aside Pattern |
| 22 | CQRS | Separates read and write operations | CQRS Pattern |
| 23 | Event Sourcing | Stores state changes as a sequence of events | Event Sourcing Pattern |
| 24 | Idempotency | Ensures repeated requests don't create duplicate effects | Idempotency Pattern |
| 25 | Strangler Fig | Gradually replaces a legacy application | Strangler Fig Pattern |
| 26 | Anti-Corruption Layer | Protects a new service from legacy models | Anti-Corruption Layer Pattern |
| 27 | Backend for Frontend | Provides a dedicated backend for each client | BFF Pattern |
| 28 | Aggregator | Combines responses from multiple services | Aggregator Pattern |
| 29 | Adapter | Converts one interface into another | Adapter Pattern |
| 30 | Sidecar | Runs supporting functionality alongside a service | Sidecar Pattern |
| 31 | Service Mesh | Manages service-to-service communication | Service Mesh Pattern |
| 32 | Ambassador | Handles external communication through a proxy | Ambassador Pattern |
| 33 | Externalized Configuration | Keeps configuration outside application code | External Configuration Pattern |
| 34 | Centralized Configuration | Provides configuration from a central location | Configuration Server Pattern |
| 35 | Health Check | Determines whether a service is operational | Health Check Pattern |
| 36 | Distributed Tracing | Tracks requests across multiple services | Distributed Tracing Pattern |
| 37 | Centralized Logging | Collects logs from multiple services | Centralized Logging Pattern |
| 38 | Observability | Provides visibility into distributed system behavior | Observability Pattern |
| 39 | Contract Testing | Validates compatibility between service consumers and providers | Consumer-Driven Contract Pattern |
| 40 | API Versioning | Allows APIs to evolve without breaking clients | API Versioning Pattern |
| 41 | Authentication | Verifies the identity of users or services | Authentication Pattern |
| 42 | Authorization | Controls access to resources | Authorization Pattern |
| 43 | Token Propagation | Passes user/service identity between services | Token Propagation Pattern |
| 44 | Zero Trust | Services are not automatically trusted | Zero Trust Pattern |
| 45 | Blue-Green Deployment | Uses two environments for safer releases | Blue-Green Pattern |
| 46 | Canary Deployment | Releases changes gradually | Canary Release Pattern |
| 47 | Rolling Deployment | Gradually replaces old service instances | Rolling Update Pattern |
| 48 | Horizontal Scaling | Adds additional service instances | Scale-Out Pattern |
| 49 | Fault Isolation | Prevents one service failure from spreading | Failure Isolation Pattern |
| 50 | Independent Deployment | Allows services to be deployed separately | Independent Deployment Pattern |
Interview question
| What are Microservices, and how do they differ from Monolithic architecture? |
| Why are Microservices important for AI and Agentic AI platforms? |
| What are the core principles of Microservices architecture? |
| What are the advantages and disadvantages of Microservices? |
| How do you identify service boundaries in a Microservices architecture? |
| What is Domain-Driven Design (DDD), and how does it help Microservices? |
| What is a bounded context in Microservices? |
| How do you decompose a monolithic application into Microservices? |
| What are the common communication patterns between Microservices? |
| How do synchronous and asynchronous communication differ in Microservices? |
| What is REST-based communication in Microservices? |
| What is gRPC, and when would you use it in Microservices? |
| What is event-driven architecture in Microservices? |
| How do Kafka and Microservices work together in AI systems? |
| What is an API Gateway, and why is it needed in Microservices? |
| How do API Gateways support AI and LLM-based applications? |
| What is service discovery, and how does it work? |
| How do Eureka, Consul, and Kubernetes Service Discovery differ? |
| What is client-side vs server-side service discovery? |
| How do Microservices handle dynamic scaling? |
| What is centralized configuration management in Microservices? |
| How does Spring Cloud Config help Microservices? |
| What is distributed tracing, and why is it important? |
| How do OpenTelemetry and Zipkin help Microservices observability? |
| What metrics should be monitored in Microservices? |
| How do logs, metrics, and traces work together? |
| What is the role of Prometheus and Grafana in Microservices? |
| How do you monitor AI service latency in Microservices? |
| What is resiliency in Microservices? |
| How do Circuit Breakers work in Microservices? |
| How does Resilience4j improve fault tolerance? |
| What are retries, bulkheads, and rate limiters? |
| How do you prevent cascading failures in Microservices? |
| How do you design highly available Microservices? |
| What is eventual consistency in Microservices? |
| How do SAGA patterns work in distributed transactions? |
| What is choreography vs orchestration in SAGA? |
| How do Microservices manage distributed data? |
| Why should each Microservice own its database? |
| How do you implement CQRS in Microservices? |
| What is Event Sourcing, and when should it be used? |
| How do Microservices support AI data pipelines? |
| How do Microservices integrate with Vector Databases? |
| How do Microservices integrate with RAG architectures? |
| What is an AI Gateway in an LLM platform? |
| How do you design a Chatbot using Microservices? |
| How do you design an Agentic AI platform using Microservices? |
| What Microservices are typically required in an AI platform? |
| How do Prompt Services fit into a Microservices architecture? |
| How do Memory Services fit into an Agentic AI architecture? |
| How do Tool Services fit into Agentic AI platforms? |
| How do RAG Services fit into AI architectures? |
| How do Model Routing Services work in AI platforms? |
| How do Guardrail Services improve AI safety? |
| How do Evaluation Services measure AI quality? |
| How do AI Observability Services work? |
| How do Microservices integrate with OpenAI APIs? |
| How do Microservices integrate with Azure OpenAI? |
| How do you manage multiple LLM providers in Microservices? |
| How do you implement model fallback strategies? |
| How do you implement AI cost optimization in Microservices? |
| How do you track token consumption across services? |
| How do Redis and Microservices work together? |
| How does Elasticsearch support Microservices? |
| How does PostgreSQL support Microservices? |
| How do MongoDB and Microservices work together? |
| How do Docker and Microservices work together? |
| How does Kubernetes manage Microservices? |
| What are Kubernetes Deployments, Services, and Ingress? |
| How does Horizontal Pod Autoscaling work? |
| How do Microservices support multi-region deployments? |
| How do you secure Microservices using OAuth2? |
| How do JWT tokens work in Microservices? |
| How do API Gateways enforce security? |
| How do you implement zero-trust security in Microservices? |
| How do service-to-service authentication mechanisms work? |
| How do you secure AI tools exposed through Microservices? |
| How do you prevent prompt injection from propagating across services? |
| How do you protect sensitive data in AI Microservices? |
| How do you implement PII masking across Microservices? |
| How do you test Microservices independently? |
| How do contract tests work in Microservices? |
| How do integration tests work across Microservices? |
| How do you mock dependent services during testing? |
| How do you perform performance testing in Microservices? |
| How do you perform chaos engineering in Microservices? |
| How do CI/CD pipelines support Microservices? |
| How do GitOps practices improve Microservices deployments? |
| How do Blue-Green deployments work? |
| How do Canary deployments work? |
| How do Feature Flags help Microservices releases? |
| How do you troubleshoot production issues in Microservices? |
| How do you optimize latency in distributed Microservices? |
| How do you handle high-throughput event processing? |
| How do you design a scalable enterprise AI platform using Microservices? |
| How would you design a production-grade RAG platform using Microservices? |
| How would you design a multi-agent AI platform using Microservices? |
| How would you design a global-scale AI and LLM platform using Microservices? |