Scenario: Your company is planning to migrate its monolithic application to a distributed microservices architecture. What factors would you consider when designing this transition, and what challenges might you anticipate?

When transitioning from a monolithic application to a distributed microservices architecture, factors such as service decomposition, communication protocols, and data management are critical considerations. Breaking down the monolith into smaller, independent services requires careful planning to identify service boundaries and dependencies. Selecting appropriate communication protocols like REST or gRPC facilitates communication between microservices. Managing data consistency and synchronization across distributed services is also essential. Challenges may arise in maintaining consistency, ensuring proper service discovery, and managing inter-service communication overhead. Adopting strategies like container orchestration with tools like Kubernetes, implementing API gateways for managing external access to services, and enforcing security measures are vital for a successful migration to microservices.