Exploring maintainability assurance research for service- And microservice-based systems: Directions and differences

Justus Bogner, Adrian Weller, Stefan Wagner, Alfred Zimmermann

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

To ensure sustainable software maintenance and evolution, a diverse set of activities and concepts like metrics, change impact analysis, or antipattern detection can be used. Special maintainability assurance techniques have been proposed for service- and microservice-based systems, but it is difficult to get a comprehensive overview of this publication landscape. We therefore conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to collect and categorize maintainability assurance approaches for service-oriented architecture (SOA) and microservices. Our search strategy led to the selection of 223 primary studies from 2007 to 2018 which we categorized with a threefold taxonomy: a) architectural (SOA, microservices, both), b) methodical (method or contribution of the study), and c) thematic (maintainability assurance subfield). We discuss the distribution among these categories and present different research directions as well as exemplary studies per thematic category. The primary finding of our SLR is that, while very few approaches have been suggested for microservices so far (24 of 223, ∼11%), we identified several thematic categories where existing SOA techniques could be adapted for the maintainability assurance of microservices.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationJoint Post-Proceedings of the 1st and 2nd International Conference on Microservices, Microservices 2017/2019
EditorsLuis Cruz-Filipe, Saverio Giallorenzo, Saverio Giallorenzo, Fabrizio Montesi, Marco Peressotti, Florian Rademacher, Sabine Sachweh
PublisherSchloss Dagstuhl- Leibniz-Zentrum fur Informatik GmbH, Dagstuhl Publishing
ISBN (Electronic)9783959771375
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 2020
Externally publishedYes
Event1st and 2nd International Conference on Microservices, Microservices 2017/2019 - Dortmund, Germany
Duration: 19 Feb 201921 Feb 2019

Publication series

NameOpenAccess Series in Informatics
Volume78
ISSN (Print)2190-6807

Conference

Conference1st and 2nd International Conference on Microservices, Microservices 2017/2019
Country/TerritoryGermany
CityDortmund
Period19/02/1921/02/19

Keywords

  • And phrases Maintainability
  • Microservices
  • Quality Assurance
  • Service-Based Systems
  • SOA
  • Software Evolution
  • Systematic Literature Review

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