Advantages of Event-Driven Architecture in Microservice Applications

Author: Nino Gagnidze
Keywords: Event-driven design, Load testing, Microservices, Performance, Rest API, Scalability, Software architecture
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The rapid progress of technology has far-reaching implications for businesses and industries, influencing their operations, revenue generation, and customer satisfaction. Within the realm of software development, various approaches are employed to tackle business challenges, and selecting the most suitable approach is vital for capitalizing on technological advancements. One of the innovative approaches is the microservices architecture. In a microservice system, which consists of interconnected small services, one of the main challenges in system design is ensuring efficient communication between these services. Performance-related issues often arise under heavy loads in microservice-based applications. The article proposes a solution to address the performance issues in microservices-based applications when experiencing heavy loads. This is achieved by adopting an event-based approach as the communication mechanism between components. Through the utilization of high-load testing techniques, the article evaluates system throughput, error frequency, resource utilization, and response time for both the event-based and REST-API approaches. The tests measured system throughput, error rates, resource utilization, and responsiveness and the results indicate that the event-based approach outperforms the REST API approach in several aspects. Specifically, the event-based approach demonstrated a 14% improvement in responsiveness and a 23% increase in throughput compared to REST API. Additionally, the event-based approach showed a significant reduction in error rates, almost five times lower than the REST API approach. However, it should be noted that the event-based approach consumed approximately 10% more CPU resources. This article substantiates the advantages of using the event-based architecture over the REST API approach in microservice applications, particularly when dealing with large volumes of data. It can be concluded that the implementation of an event-based communication approach in a microservice system enables organizations to optimize their operations, enhance customer experience, and achieve a remarkable level of operational effectiveness. This is particularly significant as technological advancements continue to revolutionize business activities.