Decoupled services refer to a design approach in software architecture where individual components or services operate independently of one another. This means that changes in one service do not directly affect others, allowing for greater flexibility, scalability, and maintainability. In a decoupled architecture, services communicate through well-defined interfaces, often using APIs, which helps to minimize dependencies.

In Java, for instance, decoupling is achieved by modeling APIs as interfaces or abstract classes. This allows the consumer of the API to remain unaware of the specific implementations, thus avoiding direct dependencies. The Java service loader API facilitates this by enabling the dynamic discovery of service implementations at runtime, which is essential for maintaining decoupling between modules ².

The benefits of decoupled services include easier testing, the ability to deploy services independently, and the potential for different teams to work on different services without stepping on each other’s toes. This approach is particularly useful in microservices architectures, where multiple services need to interact while remaining independent ⁴.