Photo credit We continue building our microservices system by adding a coordination layer to handle spinning multiple services up and down. In previous blog posts, we grew from two Spring Boot applications to three applications + a database container. As we continue to scale and broaden our system, we will need something to coordinate service and ensure consistent communication (avoid human error). We will do this through docker-compose, an orchestration tool that manages containerized applications.

Photo credit This blog post is the fourth iteration in a series of posts about building microservices in Java. The initial post started with a single string message passed between two locally-running applications, and we are gradually adding services and functionality along the way. In this level 4 installment, we will add a new service that will manage book authors. It will call a database containing a data domain of books and retrieve authors and their information.

Photo credit My dad likes to say that cooking is another form of creativity - part art, part science - that produces something physical, edible, and enjoyable with the chef’s unique style. Programming can be similar (minus the edible part). To learn to cook, you can take classes or read books, but the best teacher is rolling up your sleeves and experimenting yourself. When should you choose this utensil or that?