Modular vs integrated architecture
Split services when access patterns force it — not because blogs celebrated microservices.
Integrated wins when
- One consistency unit
- Small team
- Higher ops maturity on one system than on twelve
- MariaDB still scales vertically/read-replicas sanely
Modular wins when
- Teams and release cadences truly diverge
- Workloads have incompatible shapes (search vs OLTP)
- Failure isolation is worth the distributed tax
Bias
Start integrated. Split at a measured seam. OQGRAPH is modular inside one database — graph compute without a second operational plane. That pattern is often enough.