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Microservice architecture (MSA) denotes an increasingly popular architectural style in which business capabilities are wrapped into autonomously developable and deployable software components called microservices. Microservice applications are developed by multiple DevOps teams each owning one or more services. In this article, we explore the state of how DevOps teams in small and medium-sized organizations (SMOs) cope with MSA and how they can be supported. We show through a secondary analysis of an exploratory interview study comprising six cases, that the organizational and technological complexity resulting from MSA poses particular challenges for small and medium-sized organizations (SMOs). We apply model-driven engineering to address these challenges. As results of the second analysis, we identify the challenge areas of building and maintaining a common architectural understanding, and dealing with deployment technologies. To support DevOps teams of SMOs in coping with these challenges, we present a model-driven workflow based on LEMMA—the Language Ecosystem for Modeling Microservice Architecture. To implement the workflow, we extend LEMMA with the functionality to (i) generate models from API documentation; (ii) reference remote models owned by other teams; (iii) generate deployment specifications; and (iv) generate a visual representation of the overall architecture. We validate the model-driven workflow and our extensions to LEMMA through a case study showing that the added functionality to LEMMA can bring efficiency gains for DevOps teams. To develop best practices for applying our workflow to maximize efficiency in SMOs, we plan to conduct more empirical research in the field in the future.

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Microservice Architecture (MSA) is an architectural style for service-based software systems. MSA puts a strong emphasis on high cohesion and loose coupling of the services that provide systems' functionalities. As a result of this, MSA-based software architectures exhibit increased scalability and extensibility, and facilitate the application of continuous integration techniques. This paper presents a case study of an MSA-based Remote Care Application (RCA) that allows caregivers to remotely access smart home devices. The goal of the RCA is to assist persons being cared in Activities of Daily Living. Employing MSA for the realization of the RCA yielded several lessons learned, e.g., (i) direct transferability of domain models based on Domain-driven Design; (ii) more efficient integration of features; (iii) speedup of feature delivery due to MSA facilitating automated deployment.

Blockchain presents a feasible method to persist immutable information in a distributed ledger to improve the level of authentication and trust. Moreover, smart contracts enable the automated execution of any contract concluded between participants of the Blockchain network. On the other hand, Microservice Architecture (MSA) is a novel approach towards service-based scalable applications. In our paper, we present an approach based on Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) that aims to facilitate the integration process of Blockchains into MSA-based applications in order to benefit from the advantages attributed to Blockchains.