Decision Models for Selecting Patterns and Strategies in Microservices Systems and their Evaluation by Practitioners

Waseem, Muhammad and Liang, Peng and Ahmad, Aakash and Shahin, Mojtaba and Khan, Arif Ali and Márquez, Gastón (2022) Decision Models for Selecting Patterns and Strategies in Microservices Systems and their Evaluation by Practitioners. In: Proceedings - 2022 ACM/IEEE 44th International Conference on Software Engineering : Software Engineering in Practice, ICSE-SEIP 2022. Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering . IEEE Computer Society Press, USA, pp. 135-144. ISBN 9781665495905

Abstract

Researchers and practitioners have recently proposed many Mi-croservices Architecture (MSA) patterns and strategies covering various aspects of microservices system life cycle, such as service design and security. However, selecting and implementing these patterns and strategies can entail various challenges for microser-vices practitioners. To this end, this study proposes decision models for selecting patterns and strategies covering four MSA design ar-eas: application decomposition into microservices, microservices security, microservices communication, and service discovery. We used peer-reviewed and grey literature to identify the patterns, strategies, and quality attributes for creating these decision models. To evaluate the familiarity, understandability, completeness, and usefulness of the decision models, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 microservices practitioners from 12 countries across five continents. Our evaluation results show that the prac-titioners found the decision models as an effective guide to select microservices patterns and strategies.