Qualitative evaluation of dependency graph representativeness

Tuomas Nurmela, Petteri Nevavuori, Imran Rahman

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionScientificpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)
21 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Background: Enterprise application and open source software (OSS) platform and infrastructure projects are often today agile time-boxed projects. To enable project scaling, microservices software architecture (MSA) is considered to enable autonomous cross-functional teams. MSA results to loosely coupled services which communicate via well-designed APIs. Previous research on automated extraction of Microservice Dependency Graphs (MDGs) could provide means of reducing this documentation effort. Aims: The aim of the study was to look at the MDG representativeness of a Spinnaker OSS project micro-services-based software architecture and MDG, providing assessment of possibilities in using MDGs for documenting microservices-based software architectures. Method: The study uses a qualitative approach to evaluate the MDG representativeness of software architecture description. Evaluation is done through assessment of limitations, issues and future development possibilities. Results: MDG of Spinnaker OSS is extracted with an automation tool and contrasted to the software architecture as described on OSS project documentation. Compile-time MDG description and runtime focused documented software architecture lead to limitations in MDG rpresentativiness. Conclusions: Focusing on a particular OSS microservices project, the MDG extraction through static code analysis limits to compile-time information. Limitations in capturing inter-service communication at runtime to describe key architectural views of software architecture lead to a need to look for complementing approaches.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSSSME-2019
Subtitle of host publicationJoint Proceedings of the Inforte Summer School on Software Maintenance and Evolution
PublisherCEUR-WS
Pages37-44
Number of pages8
Publication statusPublished - 2019
Publication typeA4 Article in conference proceedings
EventJoint of the Summer School on Software Maintenance and Evolution - Tampere, Finland
Duration: 2 Sept 20194 Sept 2019

Publication series

NameCEUR Workshop Proceedings
Volume2520
ISSN (Print)1613-0073

Conference

ConferenceJoint of the Summer School on Software Maintenance and Evolution
Country/TerritoryFinland
CityTampere
Period2/09/194/09/19

Publication forum classification

  • Publication forum level 1

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Computer Science

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