Service discovery and registration is one of the most popular service patterns. It is used extensively in SOAP-based web services. Put simply, you need a place where all microservices, also known as services, get registered and can be referenced. In this way, you can refer, monitor, and check the availability of service instances at a single place.
Everything is dynamic today. Services may change IP or port frequently, which is quite common in cloud platforms. Therefore, you can't use hardcoded values for the host IP, name, port, and so on.
Service discovery and registration entails the use of a database where service instance details are kept, including their locations. On top of that, there is also a health check API, which provides prudent ways to identify dead instances.
The main features of service registration and discovery are as...