Monolithic system

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A monolithic system is a system that is integrated into one whole, analogous to a monolith. The phrase can have slightly different meanings in the contexts of computer software and hardware.

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In application software

In application software, software is called "monolithic" if it has a monolithic architecture, in which functionally distinguishable aspects (for example data input and output, data processing, error handling, and the user interface) are all interwoven, rather than containing architecturally separate components. [1] Software systems like this are examples of monolithic applications. [2]

In hardware

An electronic hardware system, such as a multi-core processor, is called "monolithic" if its components are integrated together in a single integrated circuit. Note that such a system may consist of architecturally separate components in a multi-core system, each core forms a separate component as long as they are realized on a single die.[ citation needed ]

In system software

In system software, a monolithic kernel is an operating system (OS) architecture where the entire OS is working in kernel space.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Symmetric multiprocessing</span> The equal sharing of all resources by multiple identical processors

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Monolithic application</span> Software design pattern

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kernel (operating system)</span> Core of a computer operating system

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In software engineering, a microservice architecture is a variant of the service-oriented architecture structural style. It is an architectural pattern that arranges an application as a collection of loosely coupled, fine-grained services, communicating through lightweight protocols. One of its goals is that teams can develop and deploy their services independently of others. This is achieved by the reduction of several dependencies in the code base, allowing developers to evolve their services with limited restrictions from users, and for additional complexity to be hidden from users. As a consequence, organizations are able to develop software with fast growth and size, as well as use off-the-shelf services more easily. Communication requirements are reduced. These benefits come at a cost to maintaining the decoupling. Interfaces need to be designed carefully and treated as a public API. One technique that is used is having multiple interfaces on the same service, or multiple versions of the same service, so as to not disrupt existing users of the code.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Unikernel</span> Specialised, single address space machine images

A unikernel is a computer program statically linked with the operating system code on which it depends. Unikernels are built with a specialized compiler that identifies the operating system services that a program uses and links it with one or more library operating systems that provide them. Such a program requires no separate operating system and can run instead as the guest of a hypervisor.

References

  1. Rod Stephens (2 March 2015). Beginning Software Engineering. John Wiley & Sons. p. 94. ISBN   978-1-118-96916-8.
  2. Harris, Chandler (2022). "Microservices vs. monolithic architecture: When monoliths grow too big it may be time to transition to microservices". atlassian.com.