Architecture cheatsheet: SOA vs Microservices

Martin Fowler gives a good definition for Microservices architecture term. In short this architectural style concentrates on building a suite of small services. Every of these small guys are running in its own space and communicating via lightweight way - say HTTP/REST.

In comparison to classic SOA architecture Microservices approach concentrates on really "small" parts with two different responsibilities:

• Infrastructure services
• Functional services

Functional components within a microservices architecture in fact has single purpose, and do one thing at  a time. The big win is they do it  really really well.