Database per Service
A microservices pattern where each service owns its private database. No other service can access it directly. Enforces loose coupling but complicates cross-service queries.
What is Database per Service?
A microservices pattern where each service owns its private database. No other service can access it directly. Enforces loose coupling but complicates cross-service queries.
Database per Service is a intermediate-level concept that sits in the Microservices Architecture area of system design. Engineers reach for it whenever they need to reason about real-world trade-offs in that space — not just for textbook correctness, but because real production systems at companies like Netflix, Amazon, and Google make these decisions every day.
If you want to go deeper than this definition — with diagrams, code, and a quiz to lock it in — work through the "Database per Service" lesson linked below. It walks through the why, the mechanism, the trade-offs, and how the giants actually use it in production.
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Full interactive lesson with diagrams, code examples, real-world references, and a quiz.
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Related glossary terms you might want to look up next.
Microservices
An architecture where an application is split into small, independent services that communicate over the network. Each service owns its own data and can be deployed separately.
Saga Pattern
A way to manage distributed transactions across microservices using a sequence of local transactions with compensating actions for rollback.
Data Federation
Splitting databases by function (users in one DB, orders in another) so each database handles only its domain. Simpler than sharding but limits cross-domain joins.