The Micro Frontend Wave.

I spent this past week with Joel Denning, the author of Single SPA, a framework for Micro frontends. We were hacking on how to improve OpenMRS UI using modern technologies. As a community, we have decided to develop the OpenMRS 3.0 UI with Single SPA.

In our engagements with Joel and other developers from East Africa in health informatics, I got to learn a lot and I will be sharing my take homes through this post.

Micro Frontend is the equivalent of the microservices but for the frontend development and not the backend. The technology was born towards the end of 2016 in Thoughtworks Technology Radar. The aim was to bring the benefits of microservices to the front-end world. Through this architecture, the following advantages can be realized:

Technology Agonistic

Micro Frontend allows the decoupling of the monolithic frontend into smaller independent components. The beauty of this architecture is it allows teams to work on components in their own stacks. One component can be developed in Vue, another in React or Angular then bundled together through the Single SPA framework. The inclusivity and diversity allow the teams to work in the best stack and produce a component within time unlike the case for a monolithic frontend.

Scalability

Independent components can be deployed and scaled without breaking the entire frontend. Continuous deployment, which has been achieved on the backend, today is a necessity for any development team. Bringing this to the frontend will change the way software products are shipped to customers.

Improve Fault Isolation

Just like the microservices, Micro Frontend enables the entire system to keep running in the event a single module fails. Imagine having to debug a monolithic frontend. The time wasted may cause a company a big fortune if the system is the backbone of the business operations. Thanks to Micro Frontend architecture, it is easy and faster to narrow down to a failing part of the entire web application.

Conclusion

Technology keeps changing. It is not long ago when we moved from monolithic systems to monolithic frontends to modular and now micro frontends. It is, therefore, time to embrace the emerging technologies that will improve how we develop for the web.

Hackathon Links

ESM Hackathon Seed

Patient Dashboard

Micro-frontends for OpenMRS