Microservices Database vs Shared Database
Pick database-per-service when services have genuinely independent lifecycles and your team can stomach eventual consistency — greenfield microservices, polyglot persistence needs, teams that own their schema end-to-end meets developers should use a shared database when building tightly integrated systems, such as monolithic applications, where strong data consistency and transactional integrity are critical, like in financial or inventory management systems. Here's our take.
Microservices Database
Pick database-per-service when services have genuinely independent lifecycles and your team can stomach eventual consistency — greenfield microservices, polyglot persistence needs, teams that own their schema end-to-end
Microservices Database
Nice PickPick database-per-service when services have genuinely independent lifecycles and your team can stomach eventual consistency — greenfield microservices, polyglot persistence needs, teams that own their schema end-to-end
Pros
- +Skip it for a small team shipping a first product with tangled read patterns; a modular monolith with one shared database gets you 90 percent of the boundary discipline without the operational tax
- +Related to: apache-kafka, postgresql
Cons
- -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case
Shared Database
Developers should use a shared database when building tightly integrated systems, such as monolithic applications, where strong data consistency and transactional integrity are critical, like in financial or inventory management systems
Pros
- +It simplifies data management by having a single schema and reduces the overhead of data synchronization, but it's less suitable for microservices architectures due to scalability and dependency issues
- +Related to: database-design, sql
Cons
- -Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case
The Verdict
Use Microservices Database if: You want skip it for a small team shipping a first product with tangled read patterns; a modular monolith with one shared database gets you 90 percent of the boundary discipline without the operational tax and can live with specific tradeoffs depend on your use case.
Use Shared Database if: You prioritize it simplifies data management by having a single schema and reduces the overhead of data synchronization, but it's less suitable for microservices architectures due to scalability and dependency issues over what Microservices Database offers.
Pick database-per-service when services have genuinely independent lifecycles and your team can stomach eventual consistency — greenfield microservices, polyglot persistence needs, teams that own their schema end-to-end
Disagree with our pick? nice@nicepick.dev