Nanoservices come instead of microservices: why and where are they needed

As good as microservices are, they also have drawbacks. Nanoservices eliminate some of these.

Although microservices start out smaller than monoliths, they can grow to the size of the system they need to replace. There is no standard definition of how big a microservice should be.

A nanoservice, for its part, is a small, independently deployable, testable, reusable component that essentially splits a microservice into several smaller pieces. Unlike a microservice, a nanoservice usually does not implement an entire business function.

Nanoservice includes all the functionality of a microservice - it's just smaller. Think of it as an ultra-small microservice that consists of a reusable fragment that can serve as a web-accessible API endpoint.

Nanoservices vs microservices

Nanoservices are more compact, more isolated, and more focused than microservices. Therefore, you do not need to worry about their frequent releases: they carry less risks, because there are fewer things in the nanoservice that can break. And different teams can work on services in parallel.

As with microservices, there is no consensus on how large a typical nanoservice should be.

For an example of how nanoservices can be used, consider a certain PayrollService, which consists of three separate services: EmployeeService, LeaveService, and DepartmentService. EmployeeService is responsible for processing detailed employee data and is a microservice with its own data store. The other two services can also be microservices.

The future of nanoservices

While nanoservices have their limitations, they are promising agents for the propagation of serverless computing. The fine-grained nature of nanoservices makes them good candidates for use in serverless architectures: they are small, reusable, and easy to deploy.

However, nanoservices are still in their infancy and it is too early to predict to what extent developers will use them in the coming years and whether they will become the dominant paradigm for serverless computing.