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

Migrating microservices to graph database

Microservice architecture is a popular approach to structuring web backend services. Another emerging trend, after a period of hibernation, is utilizing modern graph database management systems for managing complex, richly connected data. The two approaches have rarely been used in tandem, as microservices emphasize modularization and decoupling of services, while graph data models favor data integration. In this study, literature on microservices and graph databases is reviewed and a synthesis between the two paradigms is presented. Based on the theoretical discussion, a software architecture combining the two elements is formulated and implemented using microservices serving content metadata at Yleisradio, the Finnish national broadcasting company. The architecture design follows the Design Science Research Process model. Finally, the renewed system is evaluated using quantitative and qualitative metrics. The performance of the system is measured using automated API queries and load tests. The new system was compared to an earlier version based on a PostgreSQL database. The tests gave slight indication that the renewed system performed better for complex queries, where a large number of relations were traversed, but worse in terms of throughput under heavy load. Based on the these findings, a number of performance-enhancing optimizations to the system are introduced. Observations and perpectives are also gathered in a project retrospective session. It is concluded that the resulting architecture holds promise for managing complex data rich in relations in a safe manner. In it, the different domains of the knowledge graph are decoupled into distinct named graphs managed by different microservices

DevOps for Digital Leaders

DevOps; continuous delivery; software lifecycle; concurrent parallel testing; service management; ITIL; GRC; PaaS; containerization; API management; lean principles; technical debt; end-to-end automation; automatio

Creation of a Cloud-Native Application: Building and operating applications that utilize the benefits of the cloud computing distribution approach

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementVMware is a world-renowned company in the field of cloud infrastructure and digital workspace technology which supports organizations in digital transformations. VMware accelerates digital transformation for evolving IT environments by empowering clients to adopt a software-defined strategy towards their business and information technology. Previously present in the private cloud segment, the company has recently focused on developing offers related to the public cloud. Comprehending how to devise cloud-compatible systems has become increasingly crucial in the present times. Cloud computing is rapidly evolving from a specialized technology favored by tech-savvy companies and startups to the cornerstone on which enterprise systems are constructed for future growth. To stay competitive in the current market, both big and small organizations are adopting cloud architectures and methodologies. As a member of the technical pre-sales team, the main goal of my internship was the design, development, and deployment of a cloud native application and therefore this will be the subject of my internship report. The application is intended to interface with an existing one and demonstrates in question the possible uses of VMware's virtualization infrastructure and automation offerings. Since its official release, the application has already been presented to various existing and prospective customers and at conferences. The purpose of this work is to provide a permanent record of my internship experience at VMware. Through this undertaking, I am able to retrospect on the professional facets of my internship experience and the competencies I gained during the journey. This work is a descriptive and theoretical reflection, methodologically oriented towards the development of a cloud-native application in the context of my internship in the system engineering team at VMware. The scientific content of the internship of the report focuses on the benefits - not limited to scalability and maintainability - to move from a monolithic architecture to microservices

DevOps for Digital Leaders

DevOps; continuous delivery; software lifecycle; concurrent parallel testing; service management; ITIL; GRC; PaaS; containerization; API management; lean principles; technical debt; end-to-end automation; automatio