Microservices have been recognized for over a decade. They reshaped system
design enabling decentralization and independence of development teams working
on particular microservices. While loosely coupled microservices are desired,
it is inevitable for dependencies to arise. However, these dependencies often
go unnoticed by development teams. As the system evolves, making changes to one
microservice may trigger a ripple effect, necessitating adjustments in
dependent microservices and increasing maintenance and operational efforts.
Tracking different types of dependencies across microservices becomes crucial
in anticipating the consequences of development team changes. This paper
introduces the Endpoint Dependency Matrix (EDM) and Data Dependency Matrix
(DDM) as tools to address this challenge. We present an automated approach for
tracking these dependencies and demonstrate their extraction through a case
study.Comment: Accepted in ESOCC 202