Message-oriented Middleware (MOM)

Microservices & MOMs #

Microservices are decoupled by a MOM. A microservice sends a message to or receives it from the MOM. This means that the sender and the recipient do not know each other, only the communication channel. Service discovery is therefore not necessary. Sender and recipient find each other via the topic or queue through which they exchange messages.

Load balancing is also easy. If several recipients have registered for the same communication channel, a message can be processed by one of the recipients and the load can be distributed, thereby eliminating the need for a specific infrastructure for load balancing.

However, a MOM is a complex software that handles all communication. Therefore, the MOM must be highly available and has to offer a high throughput. MOMs are generally very mature products, but ensuring adequate performance under all conditions requires a lot of know-how, for example, concerning the configuration.