Describe how components of a microservice architecture exchanged data in your previous project.

In my previous project, microservices primarily exchanged data via REST API and asynchronous messages in queues (e.g., RabbitMQ). REST was used for synchronous requests when immediate data retrieval or update was needed. For events and notifications, messages in a broker were used, allowing services to be loosely coupled and process data asynchronously.

Example of exchange via REST:

// Client calls REST API of another service
RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
String response = restTemplate.getForObject("http://user-service/api/users/123", String.class);

For queue-based exchange:

• Service publishes an event to the queue
• Another service subscribes and processes the event

This approach ensures system scalability and fault tolerance.