What is monolithic architecture? What are its implications when it comes to a business’s tech stack? Find out today as we explore the world of monolithic architecture in this blog.
The modern day business generates a ton of data, often mounting towards terabytes of information that is complex. Furthermore, modern businesses aren’t exactly singular in terms of how they carry out operations. Integrations within a working business model is a common occurrence as it largely improves the efficacy of how a business is run. This is where monolithic architecture comes into play.
What is Monolithic Architecture?
It’s important to look at the term Monolith if we are to understand its architecture as well as its practicality in the form of monolithic applications. Monolith can be defined as being composed in a singular unit. The singularity factor is of the very essence of monolithic architecture as it binds together the components of an application. In textbook terms, a monolithic architecture is the basis of a monolithic application which is a singular tied software application where multiple components are combined into a single program to form a single platform.
An Example of Monolithic Application
An example of a monolithic application can help in better understanding how the architecture works. An eCommerce SaaS application is a perfect example of how monolithic applications work. Typically, an eCommerce SaaS application has several components that can include a web server, ordering systems, payment setups, shipping essentials and much more. Hence, a monolithic application is composed of multiple parts and one can imagine that the scope of the product itself is quite immense as all these parts are composed into a single unit.
The Components of Monolithic Architecture
The following are the components of Monolithic Architecture:
- Authorization: The Authorization component is responsible for authorizing a user.
- Business Logic: The application’s business logic, which is part of the program that encodes real-world business rules centered around how data is stored and created.
- Presentation: The handling of HTTP requests and its respondents
Application Integration: The integration of application with other services or other data sources. - Notification Module: The component handles email notifications and whenever they’re supposed to be sent.
- Database Layer: The component is responsible for accessing the database.
The Benefits of Monolithic Architecture
The following are some of the benefits of monolithic architecture
- Simple Development Process
It is wise to begin with monolithic architecture when you’re looking to develop a new project. The process when it comes to initial development with Monolithic architecture is considerably easier.
- Testing
The testing procedure is also easy, a common scenario could be that you can apply end-to-end testing by launching your application and you can test the UI through Selenium.
- Deployment
It is simple when it comes to deployment. All you have to do is to copy the packaged application to your server.
There are some Disadvantages to Monolithic Architecture as well:
- Maintenance
The maintenance aspect in a monolithic architecture-based application can be hard especially if the application is a complex one. You won’t be able to follow an agile approach when it comes to making changes or removing errors. The startup time is also affected if the application size is too big. Furthermore, any updates regarding the application can slow down the startup time of an application.
- Redeployment
Another disadvantage of monolithic applications is that you must redeploy the entire application every time you make an update.
Overall, monolithic applications are hard to maintain. Even though they might give you satisfactory results in the beginning or its initial stages. The applications primarily are difficult to be involved in accepting new technologies. This is the reason why there is hesitance when it comes to using monolithic architecture solely. This is the reason why Microservices Architecture takes the application development process one step higher.
0 Comments