This series continues from the last blog post about building microservices using Spring Cloud. This post has two parts. The first part describes how to create cloud-native data services using Spring Boot. The second part is a companion example project that uses Docker Compose to run multiple microservices locally to simulate a polyglot persistence setup.
What is polyglot persistence?
Polyglot persistence is a term that describes an architecture that uses a collection of different database solutions as a part of a platform’s core design. More plainly, each backing service is managed from an exclusive connection to a Spring Boot service that exposes domain data as HTTP resources.
The central idea behind polyglot persistence is that service architectures should be able to utilize the best languages for the job at hand. There is no clear definition of how to do this well, and it tends to evolve organically as central databases become cumbersome when required to add new features.
Spring Boot Roles
When designing microservices that manage exclusive access to multiple data providers, it can be useful to think about the roles in which your microservices will play.
We can think of a Spring Boot application as the basic building block for our microservice architecture.
The diagram above describes six Spring Boot applications that are color coded to describe the role they play when integrated using Spring Cloud.
Data Services
Each Spring Boot application in a microservices architecture will play a role to varying degrees of importance. The data service role is one of the most important roles in any setup. This role handles exposing the application’s domain data to other microservices in the platform.
Polyglot Data Services
The diagram below describes an example microservice architecture with multiple Spring Boot applications that expose data from multiple database providers.
