Vertical Slice Architecture
Originating in 2018 by Jimmy Bogard, through this blog post & this NDC presentation Vertical Slice Architecture (VSA) has been making waves in the .NET community. It's a great way to have a highly cohesive codebase & deliver features quickly in an enterprise environment.
The most dominant (and highly controversial - at least online) architecture, Clean Architecture is the go-to for many organisations for its great promises of maintainability and testability. However, it's not without its drawbacks. But, more accurately, it's not the best choice for every project (i.e. the golden hammer).
The most immediate difference between these two, is:
- Clean Architecture favours a layered approach, where each layer is a technical concern.
- VSA favours a feature-based approach, where each feature is a business concern.
What is this?
This is the best place to learn about Vertical Slice Architecture (VSA).
- There is a cookbook that provides the theory
- There are recipes that provide practical examples
- You can find samples of real apps that use VSA.
- You can find curated external media
There isn't much online in terms of VSA, so I'm hoping to change that (there are a lot of repetition of the same ideas). Both, by articulating the theory and by providing practical examples.
The site is primarily a knowledge base for VSA, but the code examples are for .NET/C#, typically thinking about a Web API on the ASP.NET Core engine. This is done using a companion VSA Template that I maintain. The template, importantly, should not be the starting point. It is a tool to bootstrap the theory learnt here.
I'm lost, help me!
Tip
If you're unfamiliar with common architectures, I have a quick primer presented at .NET Conf 2023. It walks through a progression from Spaghetti architecture to Clean Architecture, and then to VSA.
An important note
This site is a new work in progress. If you have any feedback, please create a new issue or discussion.
Note
This is my personal opinion and not the only way to implement VSA.
While it's a living document & will evolve with the community, you might disagree with some of the content. I encourage you to create a discussion, as I'm always open to learning new things.