How to use Clean Architecture in Microservices?

Question

I just finished reading Uncle Bob's "Clean Architecture" and now wondering how to apply it in the context of microservices!

On one hand, I think that microservices fall in the "Framework-Drivers" layer since it's an implementation on top of use-cases (they are ways to serve use-cases.) This way, we focus on the core of the app (Entities and Use-cases) and stay flexible in the implementation of the outer layers (including microservices). But since each microservice can be maintained by a different developer/team of developers, they will have a bad time when use-cases change (harder to predict who will be impacted).

On the other hand, we can split our app into multiple microservices, decoupled from each other, and apply Clean Architecture inside each microservice. The pro of this approach is that we can focus on each microservice doing one thing, and doing it well. But the problem is that we started designing using technical separations (microservices) which violates the main Clean Architecture principle of focusing on the business. Also, it will be hard to not duplicate code if two microservices uses the same entity or use-case!

I think the first scenario is the best, but I would like to have feedback from fellow developers on the long-term benefits of both scenarios, and potential troubles.

Answer 1

My two cents:

From Uncle Bob's words, "Micro-services are deployment option, not an architecture". Each micro-service should be deployable, maintainable by different teams (which can be in different geographical locations). Each team can choose their own architecture, programming language, tools, frameworks etc... And forcing each team to use single/same programming language or tool or architecture does not sound good. So each micro-service team must be able to pick their architecture.

How can each team code/maintain/deploy their own micro-service without conflicting with other teams code? This question brings us to how to separate micro-services. IMHO it should be separated on feature based (same principle applies to modularization of mobile application projects where independent teams should be able to work on separate modules/micro-services).

After separating micro-services, the communication between them is implementation detail. It can be done through web-socket/REST API etc... Inside each micro-service, if team decides to follow Clean Architecture, they can have multiple layers based on Clean Arch Principles (Domain/Core - Interface Adapters - Presentation/API & Data & Infrastructure). There can/will be duplicate codes on micro-services, which are OK for micro-services.

Answer 2

I think this question may be better on Sofware Engineering but I'll answer anyway.

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My approach would be to use DDD and define each microservice as a Domain Services grouping Use Cases semantically, then link Domain Services with Bounded Context.

Sam newman talk about the importance of separating microservice by domain abraction and not technical one in Building Microservices

The point he makes basically is that defining scaling strategies for microservice based on subdomain will better match the "real live" constraints observed on the production system than using technically based microservice and try to defined a abstract strategy.

And if you look at how something like Kubernetes works it seems to push to that direction. A pod end up being a microservice with multiple containers defined as a complete stack matching a sub-domain if the overhaul application.

It then gets easier in an e-commerce application, for example, to scale the Payment service independently of the Cart service based on customer activity than to scale the web services independently of the job queues in an abstract way.

The way those Bounded Contexts will communicate, i.e request based or event based, depends on the the specific relation between them. To use the same example a Cart may generate an event that will trigger the Payment, while the same Cart may need to request the Inventory before validating the order.

And at the end of a day those Domain Services* and Bounded Contexts can be implemented the same when starting with a monolith, even the Bounded Contexts communication can be. The underlying communication protocol becomes an implementation detail that can easily(kinda) be switch when transitioning to a distributed a.k.a microservices architecture.