Bounded Contexts and Service Boundaries

A bounded context gives one model and language a clear scope. The hard part is turning that scope into real service boundaries.

Good boundaries usually follow business capabilities, not individual entities. Splitting one service per entity often creates chatty, tightly coupled services that cannot complete workflows on their own.

Boundary design matters because good boundaries make later decisions easier, while poor ones become expensive to fix.

This chapter covers how to test candidate boundaries, why entity-based services fail, and how to keep boundaries from eroding over time.