Tightly Coupled vs. Loosely Coupled Components in AWS Application

In cloud applications, the degree of coupling between components directly affects scalability, flexibility, and resilience.

Tightly coupled architectures can slow development and complicate scaling because components depend heavily on each other. In contrast, loosely coupled architectures are ideal for the cloud as they enable independent scaling, simpler updates, and fault isolation, making it easier to build and maintain systems in cloud environments.

In this Cloud Lab, you’ll build a tightly coupled architecture for a ride-matching service using two AWS Lambda functions: one to handle ride requests, and another to match drivers. The architecture diagram below illustrates the provisioned, tightly coupled infrastructure that you’ll build in this lab.

As the Cloud Lab progresses, you’ll refactor this setup into a loosely coupled, asynchronous architecture.

You’ll create a dedicated SNS topic and an SQS queue for driver matching requests. You’ll also create a Lambda function for fare estimation and a DynamoDB table to store all the matched riders and ride requests. Finally, you’ll test your fully decoupled system by triggering ride requests and observing how each microservice executes independently and asynchronously.

By the end of this Cloud Lab, you’ll be well equipped to break down tightly coupled architectures into loosely coupled and discreetly differentiate between them.