Yes. If you understand these concepts at this level, you'll be interview-ready for the basic microservices/system-design portion. Keep the explanations simple and be able to connect them together.
A monolithic application is an application where all major functionalities are developed and deployed as one application/unit.
For example:
User + Orders + Payments + Products
↓
One application
Microservices architecture breaks an application into small, independent services, where each service focuses on a specific business capability.
Example:
User Service
Order Service
Payment Service
Product Service
Each service can generally be developed, deployed, and scaled independently.
| Monolith | Microservices |
|---|---|
| One application/unit | Multiple independent services |
| Usually deployed together | Services can be deployed independently |
| Simpler initially | More operational complexity |
| Scaling often at application level | Services can be scaled individually |
| Easier local development | Distributed debugging is harder |
| Failure can affect whole application | Failure can often be isolated |