Quiz Entry - updated: 2026.09.24
Which services make up the Astronomy Shop, and what does each of the central ones do?
Frontend, product catalog, cart and checkout carry the shopping flow; payment, shipping, currency, email and recommendation serve the checkout and the pages around it.
| Service | Job |
|---|---|
| Frontend | The user's entry point: renders the catalogue and cart, starts the checkout, talks to every backend service |
| Product Catalog | Owns the product list (telescopes, star charts, accessories) and hands product data to the frontend |
| Cart | Adds and removes products, changes quantities |
| Checkout | Orchestrates the order: calls payment, shipping, email and currency in turn |
| Payment | Simulates charging the customer, including success, extra latency and failures |
| Shipping | Calculates shipping cost and delivery information |
| Currency | Converts prices into the visitor's currency |
| Sends the order confirmation | |
| Recommendation | Suggests other products; generates extra service-to-service calls |
The services are deliberately written in many different languages (the frontend in TypeScript, checkout in Go, payment in JavaScript, shipping in Rust, currency in C++, recommendation in Python, among others). That is a feature: it shows that OpenTelemetry produces one consistent kind of telemetry no matter which language a service is written in, which is the whole point of a vendor- and language-neutral standard.
Go deeper:
Microservices — Wikipedia — the architecture style the shop is built in, with its trade-offs.