Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads has introduced a new microservices and event-driven architecture (MEDA) platform in partnership with a global technology consultancy. The department selected the company to help drive its digital transformation in December last year. The partners have been working for the past six months to develop the new platform. The MEDA platform comprises a collection of modern, flexible and scalable tools and practices that allow the department to build solutions that meet its needs using standard patterns.
The Department of Transport and Main Roads Executive Director (Business) stated that the successful project will enable the department to build customer-oriented solutions faster and more cost-effectively. He stated, “What worked well for us during the process was not only the ability to deliver a technical outcome but the ability to transfer knowledge from a vendor partner to our internal teams as we begin to transition to new ways of working,” he said.
The Managing Director for the ANZ of the company added that the partners plan to expand their collaboration in the future. She noted that the company’s strategic partnership with TMR is not only an exciting opportunity for the company but also a true testament to how crucial it is for businesses across all industries to have a strong platform for innovation.
The aim is to build on the firm’s with TMR’s MEDA platform, harnessing this partnership and working with experienced teams to help move the department towards a more agile and transformational digital framework.
About microservices and event-driven architecture (MEDA) technology
One article notes that event-driven microservice architecture services communicate with each other via event messages. When business events occur, producers publish them with messages. At the same time, other services consume them through event listeners.
Thus, the main benefits of event-driven systems are asynchronous behaviour and loosely coupled structures. For example, instead of requesting data when needed, apps consume them via events before the need. Therefore, overall app performance increases. On the other hand, keeping coupling loose is one of the main key points of a microservice environment.
One paper notes that microservices are an architectural pattern that structures an application as a collection of small, loosely coupled services that operate together to achieve a common goal. Because they work independently, they can be added, removed, or upgraded without interfering with other applications.
While there are numerous benefits to microservices architecture, like easier deployment and testing, improved productivity, flexibility, and scalability, they also pose a few disadvantages, as independently-run microservices require a seamless method of communication to operate as one larger application.
Event-driven microservices allow for real-time microservices communication, enabling data to be consumed in the form of events before they’re even requested.
Another article notes that design patterns have always been used as tools to structure code around common problem sets. For example, categories of object-oriented design patterns are creational, behavioural, and structural; they’re used to solve common problems in software design. SOA design patterns have been around for more than a decade and are a precursor to today’s REST API and cloud API design patterns.
Using microservice design patterns is critical for long-term success. Technology organizations target independent, resilient, auto-provisioning services that support failure isolation, continuous delivery, and a decentralised governance model. That can be challenging if development teams don’t have a common language, microservice architecture, and implementation strategy to develop with design patterns.
