Yes, you’re describing a distributed monolith. Microservices are independent, with nothing shared. They define a public interface and that’s it, that’s the entire exposed surface area. You will need to do major version bumps sometimes, when there are backwards incompatible changes to make, but these are rare.
The logical problem you’re running into is exactly why microservices are such a bad idea for most businesses. How many businesses can have entirely independent system components?
Almost all “microservice” systems in production are distributed monoliths. Real microservices are incredibly rare.
A mental model for true microservices is something akin to depending on the APIs of Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and YouTube. They’ll have their own data models, their own versioning cycles and all that you consume is the public interface.
The logical problem you’re running into is exactly why microservices are such a bad idea for most businesses. How many businesses can have entirely independent system components?
Almost all “microservice” systems in production are distributed monoliths. Real microservices are incredibly rare.
A mental model for true microservices is something akin to depending on the APIs of Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and YouTube. They’ll have their own data models, their own versioning cycles and all that you consume is the public interface.