Microservice Transition and its Granularity Problem: A Systematic Mapping Study

Microservices have gained wide recognition and acceptance in software industries as an emerging architectural style for autonomic, scalable, and more reliable computing. The transition to microservices has been highly motivated by the need for better alignment of technical design decisions with improving value potentials of architectures. Despite microservices' popularity, research still lacks disciplined understanding of transition and consensus on the principles and activities underlying "micro-ing" architectures. In this paper, we report on a systematic mapping study that consolidates various views, approaches and activities that commonly assist in the transition to microservices. The study aims to provide a better understanding of the transition; it also contributes a working definition of the transition and technical activities underlying it. We term the transition and technical activities leading to microservice architectures as microservitization. We then shed light on a fundamental problem of microservitization: microservice granularity and reasoning about its adaptation as first-class entities. This study reviews state-of-the-art and -practice related to reasoning about microservice granularity; it reviews modelling approaches, aspects considered, guidelines and processes used to reason about microservice granularity. This study identifies opportunities for future research and development related to reasoning about microservice granularity.Comment: 36 pages including references, 6 figures, and 3 table

Integration of BPM systems

New technologies have emerged to support the global economy where for instance suppliers, manufactures and retailers are working together in order to minimise the cost and maximise efficiency. One of the technologies that has become a buzz word for many businesses is business process management or BPM. A business process comprises activities and tasks, the resources required to perform each task, and the business rules linking these activities and tasks. The tasks may be performed by human and/or machine actors. Workflow provides a way of describing the order of execution and the dependent relationships between the constituting activities of short or long running processes. Workflow allows businesses to capture not only the information but also the processes that transform the information - the process asset (Koulopoulos, T. M., 1995). Applications which involve automated, human-centric and collaborative processes across organisations are inherently different from one organisation to another. Even within the same organisation but over time, applications are adapted as ongoing change to the business processes is seen as the norm in today’s dynamic business environment. The major difference lies in the specifics of business processes which are changing rapidly in order to match the way in which businesses operate. In this chapter we introduce and discuss Business Process Management (BPM) with a focus on the integration of heterogeneous BPM systems across multiple organisations. We identify the problems and the main challenges not only with regards to technologies but also in the social and cultural context. We also discuss the issues that have arisen in our bid to find the solutions

InfoTech Update, Volume 13, Number 4, July/August 2004

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/aicpa_news/5005/thumbnail.jp

Converged Reality: A Data Management Research Agenda for a Service-, Cloud-, and Data-Driven Era

We are accustomed to distinguishing activities that occur on or through the Internet as distinct from activities that occur in the physical world: online versus offline, virtual reality versus reality, and so on. As Internet-based services have evolved, this distinction has continued to blur. We now have a converged reality: the online does not merely augment the offline; rather, the two are increasingly indistinguishable. Mobility, cloud computing, servicedriven technology, cognitive computing, and Big Data analytics are some of the distinct but related innovations driving this shift. Because the shift is happening in pieces across multiple areas and sectors, our converged reality is emergent and grassroots, not a carefully planned joint effort. There are therefore areas that have been and will be slow to acknowledge and adapt to this shift; data management is one of these areas. This paper describes how this converged reality grew from previous research into bridging online and offline worlds, and how it will lead to a cognitive reality. It identifies enablers and dampeners, and describes a data management research agenda specifically for converged reality. The proposed research agenda is intended to spark discussion and engage further work in this area

Enabling Design of Middleware for Massive Scale IOT-based Systems

Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology has rapidly advanced to the stage where it is feasible to discover, locate and identify various smart sensors and devices based on the context, situation, characteristics, and relevancy to query for their data or control actions. Taking things a step further when developing Large Scale Applications requires that two serious issues be overcome. The first issue is to find a solution for data sensing and collection from a massive number of various ubiquitous devices when converging these into the next generation networks. The second important issue is to deal with the “Big Data” that arrive from a very large number of sources. This research emphasizes the need for finding a solution for a large scale data aggregation and delivery. The paper introduces biomimetic design methods for data aggregation in the context of large scale IoT-based systems

The Role of the Natural Resource Curse in Preventing Development in Politically Unstable Countries: Case Studies of Angola and Bolivia

For about three decades now, development economics researchers have consistently claimed that third world resource-rich countries were not developing as well and/or as fast as they were expected to, given that their natural resources endowment was considered a great opportunity for development. The phenomenon of underperformances concerning primary commodity exporters relative to non resource-rich countries has been often referred to as to the “Natural Resource Curse”. The authors use an historical and political approach to the manifestations of the curse in the specific cases of Angola and Bolivia, both resource abundant countries, but suffering among the lowest development standards in their respective continents. In chapter one, the authors make a quick review of the literature explaining both causes and manifestations of the Resource Curse. The authors go beyond the classical Dutch Disease explanations and show how natural resources lead to behaviours of looting, rent-seeking and civil confrontations. In chapter two, the authors present the framework where they adjust the “African Anti-growth Policy Syndromes” described by Paul Collier to the specific case of the Natural Resource curse. In addition, they add some considerations of the negative effect of natural resource extraction by analysing externalities on environment, education and inequalities. Chapters three and four analyse the case studies of Angola and Bolivia respectively, emphasizing the role of historical context explaining policy behaviour and the critical impact of unexpected windfalls and sudden price collapses. The authors find that natural resources could sustain long lasting conflicts, but that conditions of fractionalization of society determine the possibility of conflict. A country divided in two rigid political factions is more prone to internal conflict, like in Angola, whether in countries where frontiers between blocks are blurried or the country is multi-polar, like in Bolivia, the risks of long-lasting civil war seem less important. Apart from conflict, the authors show that lack of institutions and inequality make of natural resources a source of political instability that has far more impact on economic performances than other factors.Natural Resource curse, Rent-seeking, Civil War, Angola, Bolivia