Scalability
The ability of a system to handle increasing amounts of work or to be enlarged to accommodate growth. Scalability can be vertical (more powerful hardware) or horizontal (more instances of the same component).
Definition
The ability of a system to handle increasing amounts of work or to be enlarged to accommodate growth. Scalability can be vertical (more powerful hardware) or horizontal (more instances of the same component).
Related Terms
Microservices
An architectural style where an application is composed of small, independent services that communicate over a network. Each service is responsible for a specific business capability and can be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.
Modular Monolith
A monolithic application that is internally organized into well-defined, independent modules. This approach combines the operational simplicity of a monolith with the code-level separation of concerns found in microservices.
Event-Driven Architecture
A software architecture pattern where services communicate by producing and consuming events. When something happens, a service publishes an event, and other services react to it. This enables loose coupling and asynchronous processing.
API Gateway
A server that acts as an entry point for all API requests. An API gateway handles routing, authentication, rate limiting, request transformation, and response aggregation — simplifying client interactions with multiple backend services.