Various Approaches to Microservice Decomposition

Microservice architecture is an abstract design principle without a strict definition, making service decomposition a nuanced task that depends on concrete business scenarios.

Decomposition Approach 1 – Vertical and Horizontal Split (Weibo expert Hu Zhong): Vertical splitting groups services by business domain based on the closeness of business relationships, while horizontal splitting isolates common, independent functions that are used by multiple services.

Decomposition Approach 2 – Business‑Driven and Team‑Oriented (Alibaba perspective): Emphasizes aligning services with business independence and professional boundaries, avoiding team‑based boundaries that cause “territorial” conflicts. It also stresses that post‑split maintenance costs (people, resources, time) must be lower than before, and that release frequency should follow an 80/20 principle, extracting frequently changing parts into separate services.

Decomposition Approach 3 – Criteria from a Senior Expert (Li Yunhua): Proposes multiple axes for splitting:

Based on business logic: services correspond to distinct business responsibilities.

Based on stability: stable modules are grouped together, while volatile modules are isolated.

Based on reliability: high‑reliability core modules are clustered, low‑reliability ones are separated.

Based on performance: performance‑critical modules (e.g., search, checkout) become independent services.

The article concludes that no single standard exists; the best split combines several criteria and must be adapted to the specific context.

Additional Considerations – Team Size: A rule of thumb suggests three developers per service to ensure redundancy, balanced workload, and effective technical discussion, while larger teams may justify more granular splits.

Overall, the piece provides a comparative overview of microservice decomposition methods, highlighting the importance of multi‑dimensional analysis, cost awareness, and organizational alignment.