Welcome to Software Architecture Matchups
Discover in-depth comparisons between your favorite programming languages, tools, and frameworks. Browse the Matchups below to find the perfect comparison to guide your project decisions!
Available Matchups
- Monolithic vs MicroservicesContrasting a single deployable monolith with independently deployable microservices, covering modularity, scaling, and team ownership.
- Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) vs MicroservicesComparing the broader SOA approach and its enterprise service bus to the fine-grained, decentralized microservices pattern.
- Layered (N-Tier) vs Hexagonal (Ports & Adapters)Evaluating strict layer separation against the flexibility of hexagonal designs that isolate domain logic via ports and adapters.
- Model-View-Controller (MVC) vs Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM)Analyzing MVC’s controller-driven flow compared to MVVM’s two-way data binding and view-model abstractions for UI applications.
- Event-Driven vs Request-ResponseExploring asynchronous, decoupled event-driven systems versus traditional synchronous request-response interactions.
- RESTful vs GraphQLFeature and performance comparison between resource-based REST APIs and query-centric GraphQL endpoints.
- Client-Server vs Peer-to-PeerAssessing central server dependency against decentralized, equal-peer architectures for data and service distribution.
- Batch Processing vs Stream ProcessingComparing high-throughput batch jobs with real-time stream pipelines for data ingestion and analytics.
- Shared Database vs Database per ServiceTrade-offs between a single database for all modules and individual databases per service for autonomy and release safety.
- Orchestration vs ChoreographyContrasting centralized workflow control (orchestration) with distributed event-based coordination (choreography).
- Pub/Sub vs Message QueueEvaluating publish/subscribe broadcasting models against point-to-point message queue semantics for decoupling.
- CQRS vs CRUDComparing Command Query Responsibility Segregation’s read/write separation with classic Create-Read-Update-Delete models.
- Serverless vs Container-BasedComparing FaaS-driven auto-scaled functions with container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.
- Microkernel (Plugin) vs MonolithAnalyzing core system plus plugins (microkernel) against a single unified codebase (monolith) for extensibility.
- Service Mesh vs API GatewayContrasting sidecar-based service-to-service infrastructure with edge-focused API request routing and aggregation.
- On-Premises vs Cloud-NativeEvaluating control and compliance of on-prem deployments versus elasticity and managed services in the cloud.
- Stateless vs Stateful ServicesComparing ephemeral, horizontally scalable stateless processes to stateful services that maintain session or transactional data.
- Vertical Scaling vs Horizontal ScalingAssessing increasing resources on a single node versus adding more nodes for load distribution and resilience.
- Fat Client vs Thin ClientContrasting rich, logic-heavy clients with minimal front-ends relying on server-side processing.
- Edge Computing vs Cloud ComputingComparing low-latency, on-device/edge processing to centralized cloud data centers for compute workloads.
- Event Sourcing vs Traditional PersistenceContrasting append-only event stores that capture state changes with conventional CRUD-based data models.
- Actor Model vs Shared MemoryComparing message-passing concurrency (actors) with threads accessing shared memory regions.
- Multi-Tenant vs Single-TenantAssessing shared-instance multi-tenancy against isolated single-tenant deployments for security and customization.
- Data Lake vs Data WarehouseAnalyzing raw, schema-on-read data lakes versus structured, schema-on-write data warehouses for analytics.
- 3-Tier vs 2-Tier ArchitectureEvaluating presentation-business-data layer separation against combined logic and data tiers.