What are they

Well, they are two concepts in software engineering that many times are confused, but are fundamentally different.

On one hand, the bounded context is a term originating from the Domain Driven Design (DDD) principles and describes a specific area within a software system which represents a specific area of the business/organization which has its own set of rules, language and boundaries. Within an overall system, they are a cohesive collection of data and behavior, loosely coupled between them, and possessing high functional cohesion. They are designed with the idea to ensure that the domain model is well-organized, well-structured, and aligned with the business needs, while also ensuring flexibility, scalability and maintainability throughout the life of the software system.

On the other hand, a service boundary is a term deriving from the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Microservices Architecture, where services are designed as independent and autonomous components which communicate with each other using well-defined interfaces. Here, every service would have its own service boundary that defines its scope, internal structure, responsibility, functionality, interactions with other services, or access to external resources. It can be tailored or designed around the business needs too, although in practice other factors like internal flows within the organization or external limitation get to play a role in deciding the boundary of the service.

So, are they the same thing?

Nope. They are related and, in practice, many times they can overlap/coincide, but fundamentally they are different concepts. Some key differences from a conceptual point of view are:

• Bounded context have a perspective oriented towards the business domain and they help to organize an modularize those domains. Service boundaries help in the the development of flexible, scalable, and maintainable service-oriented and microservices architectures.
• The bounded context term is a (more abstract) domain-focused concept towards specific areas, while service boundaries are more general and technology-focused.
• Bounded context is concerned with the organization and structure of the domain model - within a specific area of the system, while service boundaries are concerned with the interfaces and interactions between services within the system.
• Bounded context is a higher-level concept that is independent of any particular implementation technology, while service boundaries are more closely tied to specific implementation technologies and patterns

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