Decoupled services refer to a design approach in software architecture where individual components or services operate independently of one another. This separation allows for greater flexibility, scalability, and maintainability within a system. In a decoupled architecture, changes made to one service do not directly impact others, enabling teams to work on different services simultaneously without causing disruptions.

In the context of Java, decoupling is often achieved through the use of interfaces and abstract classes. By modeling APIs as interfaces, the implementation details are hidden from the consumer, which means that the consumer does not have a direct dependency on the specific implementation. This is facilitated by Java’s service loader API, which allows for dynamic discovery and loading of service implementations at runtime, thus maintaining the decoupling between the service consumer and provider ².

Moreover, adopting a service-oriented architecture (SOA) further enhances decoupling by modularizing business functions into separate services. Each service has a self-describing interface, allowing different teams to develop and maintain their services independently, regardless of the underlying technologies used ⁴. This approach not only improves collaboration but also simplifies the overall system architecture.