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Exploring Architectural Evolution in Microservice Systems Using Repository Mining Techniques and Static Code Analysis

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Software Architecture (ECSA 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14889))

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Abstract

Microservices have gained popularity for isolating service functionality and mitigating issues such as architectural erosion and technical debt. However, their decentralized nature and rapid development often obscure the holistic view of the system and lead developers to lose sight of the overarching architecture. Our work addresses this challenge by proposing a novel approach to track and assess the evolution of microservice architectures through static source code analysis. We combine source code repository mining techniques with architectural reconstruction to measure various metrics throughout a system’s development history. Our approach uses a formal API-based decomposition model that can easily be adapted for different scenarios by choosing various architectural metrics. We validated our method’s scalability and robustness through a case study on an extensive open-source microservice reference system with more than 40 individual services written in different languages and more than 400 commits. Our research provides software architects with a powerful tool to identify and monitor problematic architectural trends before they become imminent threats, enabling the evolution of microservice-based systems while maintaining architectural coherence and integrity.

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Data Availability Statement

We offer the whole source code and data of our study in a data set published on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10961768.

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/FudanSELab/train-ticket.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/FudanSELab/train-ticket/wiki/Service-Guide-and-API-Reference.

  3. 3.

    see, for instance, this curated list of various microservice open source systems: https://github.com/davidetaibi/Microservices_Project_List.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by: FWF (Austrian Science Fund) projects API-ACE: I 4268.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group Software Architecture, Faculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Patric Genfer & Uwe Zdun

  2. UniVie Doctoral School Computer Science DoCS, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Patric Genfer

Authors
  1. Patric Genfer
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  2. Uwe Zdun
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Correspondence to Patric Genfer .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Matthias Galster

  2. University of Bergamo, Bergamo, Italy

    Patrizia Scandurra

  3. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Tommi Mikkonen

  4. Fraunhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Pablo Oliveira Antonino

  5. University of São Paulo, São Carlos, São Paulo, Brazil

    Elisa Yumi Nakagawa

  6. University of Castilla-La Mancha, Albacete, Spain

    Elena Navarro

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Genfer, P., Zdun, U. (2024). Exploring Architectural Evolution in Microservice Systems Using Repository Mining Techniques and Static Code Analysis. In: Galster, M., Scandurra, P., Mikkonen, T., Oliveira Antonino, P., Nakagawa, E.Y., Navarro, E. (eds) Software Architecture. ECSA 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14889. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-70797-1_10

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