Microservices architecture, distributed system, multiple components, loosely coupled, autonomous services, organized around business capabilities, scaling independently, decentralized data management, language and framework diversity, communication protocols, RESTful APIs, asynchronous messaging, containerization, Docker containers, Kubernetes orchestration, service discovery, circuit breakers, load balancing, API gateways, monitoring and logging, health checks, fault tolerance, security and identity, single responsibility principle, bounded contexts, event-driven architecture, CQRS pattern, eventual consistency, idempotent operations.