Microservices vs. Monoliths

Backend web applications are often built in one of two architectures: the monolithic architecture, where the full application is deployed as a large single service, and the microservice architecture, where the application is split into multiple smaller services. This paper investigated the benefits and drawbacks of both architectures in order to determine how developers should select an architecture for their applications. A benchmark e-commerce application was implemented in both architectural styles for comparison. This application was then performance tested under various load types for each architecture in three experiments to compare their latency and throughput in a baseline performance test, a vertical and horizontal scaling test, and a CPU-intensive bottleneck test.