Database Design Strategies for Microservices

In the previous chapter, we explored the concepts of event sourcing and event stores. Event sourcing patterns help us reconcile changes made to our data stores across our microservices. Now, we’ll pivot to the broader scope of data management in a microservices architecture.

This is a critical challenge and a key enabler of system scalability, resilience, and maintainability. Unlike monolithic applications, where data is typically managed in a centralized database, microservices encourage a decentralized data ownership model. Each service is responsible for data storage, retrieval, and consistency mechanisms, which introduce data integrity, transactions, and inter-service communication complexities.

This chapter explores various strategies for managing data in a microservices environment. We will examine different approaches, such as database per service, shared databases, and event-driven data propagation, highlighting their...