Schema Services: Transitioning Towards a Federated Architecture

The article introduces the concept of schema services as a solution for organizations transitioning towards a federated architecture. The current state of most large organizations adopting federation is that their underlying architecture is "messy" with various tech stacks, data sources, and platforms. To overcome this, Andy Roberts proposes introducing a set of services in between the gateway and the underlying services, called schema services. These services deal with combining and transforming multiple microservice responses into a single, product-focused schema, allowing for an easier transition towards a federated architecture without requiring significant changes to existing services. The introduction of schema services enables organizations to create a product-focussed federated schema that can be gradually phased out as the underlying services are directly federated, reducing complexity and latency. While there are advantages such as minimal impact on existing services, scalability, and simplicity, there are also disadvantages including additional latency and cost.