Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Smash the Monolith: Refactoring Rails Apps with...
Search
Sponsored
·
SiteGround - Reliable hosting with speed, security, and support you can count on.
→
Coraline Ada Ehmke
July 21, 2013
Technology
8
1.2k
Smash the Monolith: Refactoring Rails Apps with Services and APIs
Coraline Ada Ehmke
July 21, 2013
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Coraline Ada Ehmke
See All by Coraline Ada Ehmke
Scaling the Artisan
bantik
0
170
Your First Legacy Codebase
bantik
1
440
Alchemy and the Art of Software Development
bantik
0
370
Artisans and Apprentices
bantik
1
510
Lightweight BI with Ruby, Rails, and MongoDB
bantik
6
2.7k
Better Living Through Open Source
bantik
2
170
Lightweight Business Intelligence in Ruby
bantik
3
1.2k
Beautiful APIs with Faceted
bantik
3
370
Other Decks in Technology
See All in Technology
コンテナセキュリティの最新事情 ~ 2026年版 ~
kyohmizu
6
1.4k
Cosmos World Foundation Model Platform for Physical AI
takmin
0
970
生成AIを活用した音声文字起こしシステムの2つの構築パターンについて
miu_crescent
PRO
3
220
AIエージェントに必要なのはデータではなく文脈だった/ai-agent-context-graph-mybest
jonnojun
1
240
仕様書駆動AI開発の実践: Issue→Skill→PRテンプレで 再現性を作る
knishioka
2
680
OWASP Top 10:2025 リリースと 少しの日本語化にまつわる裏話
okdt
PRO
3
840
Exadata Fleet Update
oracle4engineer
PRO
0
1.1k
CDK対応したAWS DevOps Agentを試そう_20260201
masakiokuda
1
400
M&A 後の統合をどう進めるか ─ ナレッジワーク × Poetics が実践した組織とシステムの融合
kworkdev
PRO
1
500
【Ubie】AIを活用した広告アセット「爆速」生成事例 | AI_Ops_Community_Vol.2
yoshiki_0316
1
120
外部キー制約の知っておいて欲しいこと - RDBMSを正しく使うために必要なこと / FOREIGN KEY Night
soudai
PRO
12
5.6k
SREチームをどう作り、どう育てるか ― Findy横断SREのマネジメント
rvirus0817
0
350
Featured
See All Featured
Darren the Foodie - Storyboard
khoart
PRO
2
2.4k
Creating an realtime collaboration tool: Agile Flush - .NET Oxford
marcduiker
35
2.4k
CoffeeScript is Beautiful & I Never Want to Write Plain JavaScript Again
sstephenson
162
16k
Effective software design: The role of men in debugging patriarchy in IT @ Voxxed Days AMS
baasie
0
230
Conquering PDFs: document understanding beyond plain text
inesmontani
PRO
4
2.3k
Measuring & Analyzing Core Web Vitals
bluesmoon
9
760
How to Grow Your eCommerce with AI & Automation
katarinadahlin
PRO
1
110
ラッコキーワード サービス紹介資料
rakko
1
2.3M
Visualization
eitanlees
150
17k
Bootstrapping a Software Product
garrettdimon
PRO
307
120k
Fireside Chat
paigeccino
41
3.8k
Mozcon NYC 2025: Stop Losing SEO Traffic
samtorres
0
150
Transcript
Smash the Monolith Refactoring Rails Applications
The ‘A’ Word
The definition, composition, and interactions of parts of a system.
Software architecture is...
A compromise between viability and perfection. Software architecture is...
Tempered by the need to deliver a solution. Software architecture
is...
Some science. Lots of aesthetics. Software architecture is...
Software architecture is...
vs. An age-old conflict... Big Up-Front Design Cowboy Coding
Then: Big Up-Front Design
Advantages Long-term product roadmaps Rich design artifacts Guided evolution Predictability
Disadvantages Slow implementation Resistance to change New feature friction No
room for mistakes
Now: Ad-Hoc Architecture
Guiding Principles Convention over configuration Discrete MVC layers Good separation
of concerns RESTful and resourceful
The Best Intentions Test-driven development + pair programming + pull
requests + code reviews = emergent design
The Best Intentions
Non-CRUD controller methods. The Road to Hell
Logic leaking into controllers and views. The Road to Hell
Complex object graphs. The Road to Hell
/lib/ becomes a junk drawer. The Road to Hell
Undocumented gem dependencies. The Road to Hell
Bloated user model. The Road to Hell
Signs of a Degraded Design Rigidity
Signs of a Degraded Design Fragility
Signs of a Degraded Design Immobility
Signs of a Degraded Design Feature friction
Change Gets Harder Over Time Relatively Easy Delegate If Possible
Take a Sick Day KILL IT WITH FIRE Difficulty of Change Time
How did we get here?
How did we get here? Dozens of hands on the
code.
How did we get here? Classes naturally attract new methods.
How did we get here? Increasingly slow test suite.
How did we get here? Entropy.
How did we get here? One line of code at
a time.
“Most software eventually degrades to the point where someone will
declare the design to be unsound.” Uncle Bob Martin
Values-Driven Development
Things We Value Fresh ideas combined with best practices.
Things We Value Solid design principles applied in novel ways.
A Values-Based Approach Culture of innovation + best practices +
solid design principles = better architecture?
Hexagonal Design
Theoretical Backing Layered architectures break down in practice.
Domain Objects HTTP Command Line Testing Messaging Persistence Monitoring Sinatra
Cron Test Unit Beanstalkd Postgres Honey Badger Rails Rake RSpec Rabbit MongoDB New Relic
Design Considerations Design for all of your users, not just
the obvious ones.
Design Considerations Give every class its own distinct API.
Design Considerations Write your application in pure Ruby.
Theoretical Backing Achieve framework independence.
Using APIs & Messages
Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface. Doug McIlroy, Bell Labs CSRC HTTP
Design Considerations Implement an ecosystem of small applications.
Design Considerations Divide models between the applications.
Design Considerations Persistence is a service.
Design Considerations Bind applications together using APIs and messaging.
Design Considerations Determine a caching strategy.
Design Considerations Pick a messaging solution.
Rethinking Architecture
Roots Rock.
A Sudden Revelation What if we think of an application...
...as just another object?
Object-Oriented Architecture
Theoretical Backing Apply OO design principles to the architecture itself.
Classes communicating via messages Applications communicating via APIs & queues
! Theoretical Backing
Applying OO Principles An application is a group of components
that perform tasks on the same data.
Applying OO Principles An application should do one well-defined thing.
Applying OO Principles APIs allow us to easily extend our
interfaces.
Applying OO Principles It doesn’t matter what application sends, receives
or processes our messages.
Applying OO Principles APIs and presenters allow us to easily
create client-specific interfaces.
Legacy Applications
What is a legacy app? Age is not measured in
months or years or versions.
What is a legacy app? Legacy code is not broken.
What is a legacy app? Don’t git blame.
What is a legacy app? A storehouse of information about
a problem space.
Refactoring Tactics Dismantle god classes.
Refactoring Tactics Extract behaviors into modules.
Refactoring Tactics Extract models and business logic into engines.
Refactoring Tactics Migrate engines into discrete applications.
Refactoring Tactics Implement observers using a messaging service.
Refactoring Tactics Provide persistence through asynchronous services.
Refactoring Tactics Direct calls between applications rely on a good
set of APIs.
Refactoring Tactics Use your API as a guide to refactoring
your models.
Synchronous Calls via APIs Credentials Auth Token Auth Service Client
App
Asynchronous Calls via Message Queues Prefs Update Client App Attr
Change Persistence Service
Refactoring Tactics Find functional edges and refactor them into services.
Refactoring Tactics Make liberal use of the presenter pattern.
A declarative framework useful for building APIs. faceted.rb
On the Other Side of Refactoring
A Small App Ecosystem Consumer App Internal App 1 Internal
App 2 Persistence API Messaging API Reporting API Dashboard App
Reap the Benefits Reduced cost of change.
Reap the Benefits Support for unexpected and novel use cases.
Reap the Benefits Reduction of ceremony around releases.
Reap the Benefits Low-impact downtime.
Reap the Benefits Short ramp-up time for new developers.
Reap the Benefits Increased performance of test suites.
Reap the Benefits A/B testing on applications and infrastructure.
Reap the Benefits Greater flexibility.
Reap the Benefits Democratization of application architecture.
Go smash your monolith.
smashthemonolith.com Corey Ehmke @bantik