Migrating Towards Microservice Architectures: An Industrial Survey

Abstract

Microservices are gaining tremendous traction in industry and a growing scientific interest in academia. More and more companies are adopting this architectural style for modernizing their products and taking advantage of its promised benefits (e.g., agility, scalability). Unfortunately, the process of moving towards a microservice-based architecture is anything but easy, as there are plenty of challenges to address from both technical and organizational perspectives. In this paper we report about an empirical study on migration practices towards the adoption of microservices in industry. Specifically, we designed and conducted a survey targeting practitioners involved in the process of migrating their applications and we collected information (by means of interviews and questionnaires) on (i) the performed activities, and (ii) the challenges faced during the migration. Our findings benefit both (i) researchers by highlighting future directions for industryrelevant problems and (ii) practitioners by providing a reference framework for their (future) migrations towards microservices.

Microservices Migration in Industry: Intentions, Strategies, and Challenges

“…To the same extent, functional decomposition was applied, while the explicit use of Domain-Driven Design was confirmed by only three interviewees. Even though the participants of [14] predominantly used of this concept, decomposition and finding the right service cut were identified as a major challenge in both studies.…”

“…In summary, two of the studies [14], [15] interviewed groups of similar size, but provide aggregated results only. In contrast, our study presents additional insights and experiences from practitioners through a discussion of each system.…”

A Systematic Mapping Study on Engineering Function-as-a-Service Platforms and Tools

“…Several systematic mapping studies [1,7,8,21] analyze various aspects of microservice architecture development such as research trends and challenges, various aspects related to architecting microservices, and the potential for industrial adoption of the introduced concepts. Di Francesco et al [6] investigate aspects of migrating applications to microservice architectures by means of an industrial survey. Ghofrani and Lübke [12] conduct an empirical survey on the state of the practice in microservice architectures.…”

An extensible data-driven approach for evaluating the quality of microservice architectures

“…Listing 2: Metric Provider for complexity quality attribute Line 7 checks if the type specified in the quality model is instance of the processed element of the MSA Model in the iteration; if so, it applies the code responsible for computing the value of the metric on the current artefact (lines [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. Once computed, it creates the relation in the resulting weaving model, to link the right artefact of the MSA model with the calculated value in the quality model (lines [14][15].…”

“…One of the root causes of the challenges related to MSA is that MSA shifts the complexity of the system from inside a monolith to the interdependencies among the (potentially hundreds of) microservices [29]. Other relevant reported challenges of the MSA style are related to the adoption of a different mindset for developers and ineffective knowledge communication [12]. In this context, objectively measuring, controlling, and keeping at an acceptable level the quality of the system is of paramount importance for the success of the system.…”