Any business knows that in the traditional monolithic way of building applications, the larger the application becomes, the more difficult it is to deploy new features and make changes or improvements. Moving to a microservice architecture is an innovative solution to quickly deliver software while lowering risk.
With microservices, instead of everything being built into one application, all services are broken down into the smallest possible parts. These are kept independent from one another, which means that each process, or microservice, can be built, tested, deployed, or updated as a part of the whole, without disruption to the overall application.
Until recently, a framework for microservices integration was still an issue, causing many enterprises to struggle to embrace a microservices approach. Nest.js solves this problem.
Why Embrace Microservices?
As companies seek to quickly respond to market conditions, the “containerization” structure of microservices can reap many benefits, including:
- A Door to Business Agility – Making changes to legacy applications has high risk attached, as changing one process could negatively impact another. In contrast, with loosely coupled microservices, updates can be performed independent of the rest of the application. This leads to quicker application development and version rollouts. Companies are able to fail fast, delivering new functionality within agile product timelines.
- Ability to Enforce Security Best Practices – In microservices, a full understanding and visibility of network dependencies is essential, as is consistent access and security for each microservice. To stay on top of security, individual microservices are easier to protect utilizing deep knowledge of container scanning, cluster networking, and applying service mesh to the environment.
- Scalability – Microservices can be scaled horizontally, with two machines running alongside one another, rather than making the existing machine larger. This allows scaling up and down exactly when and how needed, saving money, and improving the user experience.
- Improved Application Performance – If and when problems arise, one small piece of your application is affected rather than the whole thing. Individual microservices are easier to troubleshoot making it quicker to restore service as usual This provides better performance and better user experiences by eliminating or minimizing downtime.
- Simplicity and Consistency – Many businesses make the move to a containerized infrastructure because of the need to scale. When automated and templatized, microservices are easy to manage and simple to replicate or remove. This means a consistent approach to scaling, orchestrating and managing an application.
Nest.js Provides a Framework to Promote Adoption of Microservices
Mindful of these benefits, enterprises need a solution to effectively implement their new approach. Microservices themselves aren’t’ the solution; they’re the individual functions or services for a larger application. It is the application programming interface (API) that allow microservices to interact with the application. Therefore, building an efficient framework is necessary to promote a smooth process that quickly allows each service to run.
Nest.js solves a key issue for microservices integration by providing an architectural framework that promotes the highly scalable, easy-to-maintain structure necessary to adopt microservices. As more microservices are built, it is the framework that provides a seamless customer experience.
While there are many approaches to building an API, for microservices, the focus should be on building REST APIs. A specific kind of API, REST APIs are structured frameworks – rules, routines, protocols, etc. – that integrate each microservice into the application. It is an efficient architecture pattern for creating web services that has many benefits.
For one, REST APIs are flexible. They can handle many types of requests and send data in many different formats. REST APIs are also scalable. They are designed for communication between any two pieces of software, regardless of size or capability. As a web application grows and adds more resources, its REST API will be able to quickly handle the increasing amount and variety of requests. And REST APIs incorporate existing web technologies, making them relatively easy to build and use.
Develop Highly Testable and Scalable APIs with NEST.js
Choosing a development language is as important as choosing an application architecture. JavaScript is the current default language for front- and backend applications. Languages based on JavaScript are easy for developers to adopt because the structures are similar. In recent years, Node.js has become a popular technology for backend applications and microservices. Like Node.js, Nest.js is built on the JavaScript foundation, making it easy for Node.js developers to use.
Nest.js enables developers to build efficient, scalable Node.js server-side applications. It uses progressive JavaScript; is built with and fully supports TypeScript; and combines elements of object oriented programming, functional programming, and functional reactive programming. Nest.js provides an application architecture allowing developers to create highly testable, scalable, loosely coupled, and easily maintainable applications.
Build Dynamic REST APIs to Accelerate Microservice Adoption
Large applications are more difficult to maintain and improve. Adopting a microservice architecture is an innovative solution to quickly deliver software while lowering risk. Microservices are easy to build, test, and update with minimal disruption to an application.
Nest.js provides an architecture and easy-to-use language that allows developers to implement the scalable and maintainable structure necessary for a microservices future. As more organizations adopt this containerized approach, the framework will enable companies to continue providing a seamless customer experience.