Impacts, causes, and solutions of architectural smells in microservices: An industrial investigation

Zhong, Chenxing; Huang, Huang; Zhang, He; Li, Shanshan

doi:10.1002/spe.3138

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 68 publications

(179 reference statements)

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“…This is because architects may want to know whether their design decisions have been altered in implementation. 7 For checking the conformance between a pattern element in models model.e and in codes code.e, the basic idea is to test whether the following conditions are satisfied:…”

Section: Analyzing Existence Of Pattern Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If an implementation does not conform to the model, it violates certain design decisions already made in the model. The deviation between an implementation and its intended design (domain model) is referred to as architectural drift , 9 which is considered to impede software maintenance and evolution 7 …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Domain-driven design (DDD) [2][3][4] is a method commonly recommended for designing microservice-based systems, 5,6 especially the boundaries of microservices. 7 As the core of DDD, domain modeling is an iterative process of designing (domain) models and implementing the models in code, where the domain model can be considered as a type of architectural description 8 used to express the software architecture designed with DDD. If an implementation does not conform to the model, it violates certain design decisions already made in the model.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The deviation between an implementation and its intended design (domain model) is referred to as architectural drift, 9 which is considered to impede software maintenance and evolution. 7 Architecture conformance checking 8,10 is a typical technique used to detect indications of architectural drift. Generally, this technique is conducted by comparing the implemented architecture and the architecture the system should have, that is, the intended architecture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

DOMICO: Checking conformance between domain models and implementations

Zhong,

Zhang,

Huang

et al. 2023

Softw Pract Exp

Self Cite

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As a predominant design method for microsservices architecture (MSA), domain‐driven design (DDD) utilizes a series of standard patterns in both models and implementations to effectively support the design of architectural elements. However, an implementation may deviate from its original domain model that uses certain patterns. The deviation between a domain model and its implementation is a type of architectural drift, which needs to be detected promptly. This paper proposes an approach, namely DOMICO, to check the conformance between the domain model and its implementation, by which the conformance is formalized by defining eight common structural patterns of domain modeling and their representations in both models and the corresponding source code. Based on the formalization, our approach can not only identify the discrepancies (e.g., divergence, absence, and modification) with respect to pattern elements, but also detect possible violations of 24 compliance rules imposed by the patterns. To validate DOMICO, we performed a case study to investigate its use in a supply chain project and its performance. The results show that DOMICO can accurately identify 100% inconsistency issues in the cases examined. As the first conformance checking approach for DDD, DOMICO can be integrated into the regular domain modeling process and help ensure the conformity of microservice implementations to models.

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Section: Analyzing Existence Of Pattern Elementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

DOMICO: Checking conformance between domain models and implementations

Zhong,

Zhang,

Huang

et al. 2023

Softw Pract Exp

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Moreover, architectural anomalies can be detected through analysis a correlation and co-occurrences between architectural and design smells 58 or among each other 59 based several metrics. A tool introduced by studies 60, 61 for the detection of architectural smell is based on a metrics engine that computes all Martin metrics 62 .…”

Section: Architectural Bad Smells Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Empirical Analysis of Approach-Based Metrics Model for Architectural Erosion Detection

Baabad

Zulzalil

Hassan

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Software architecture determines success or failure in the domain of software development and design. As a system evolves, software architecture erodes. This phenomenon is called architectural erosion. Several studies that focused on various approaches to the problem of architectural erosion have been conducted. As a direct consequence of this, the metrics strategy has emerged as the most widely used solution for architectural erosion. However, providing a comprehensive perception of the elements required to evaluate the phenomenon of architectural erosion with an acceptable level of quality is a challenge. The primary goals of this research, which drew from the prior literature about identifying architectural erosion, were to (1) determine whether various adopted measures approaches determine architectural erosion in order to develop a formal model, and (2) evaluate the construct reliability and construct validity of the model. This research presents a model based on the chosen measures approaches for identifying architectural degradation. This model can be used as the cornerstone for a formal definition of general approaches and adopted metrics. Data was collected from 130 software engineering professionals with experience in architecture erosion and software metrics via a questionnaire-based survey. Structural equation Modelling (SEM) was used to analyse construct reliability, construct validity, and research hypotheses. The results demonstrate a substantial association between all metrics approach classes and architectural erosion, except for architectural complexity and architectural technical debt. Both researchers and practitioners can significantly benefit from this model’s empirical assessment and evaluation, which includes a valuable information in this context.

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Towards a security‐optimized approach for the microservice‐oriented decomposition

Liu,

Chen,

Qian

et al. 2024

J Software Evolu Process

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Microservice architecture (MSA) is a mainstream architectural style due to its high maintainability and scalability. In practice, an appropriate microservice‐oriented decomposition is the foundation to make a system enjoy the benefits of MSA. In terms of decomposing monolithic systems into microservices, researchers have been exploring many optimization objectives, of which modularity is a predominantly focused quality attribute. Security is also a critical quality attribute, that measures the extent to which a system protects data from malicious access or use by attackers. Considering security in microservices‐oriented decomposition can help avoid the risk of leaking critical data and other unexpected software security issues. However, few researchers consider the security objective during microservice‐oriented decomposition, because the measurement of security and the trade‐off with other objectives are challenging in reality. To bridge this research gap, we propose a security‐optimized approach for microservice‐oriented decomposition (So4MoD). In this approach, we adapt five metrics from previous studies for the measurement of the data security of candidate microservices. A multi‐objective optimization algorithm based on NSGA‐II is designed to search for microservices with optimized security and modularity. To validate the effectiveness of the proposed So4MoD, we perform several experiments on eight open‐source projects and compare the decomposition results to other three state‐of‐the‐art approaches, that is, FoSCI, CO‐GCN, and MSExtractor. The experiment results show that our approach can achieve at least an 11.5% improvement in terms of security metrics. Moreover, the decomposition results of So4MoD outperform other approaches in four modularity metrics, demonstrating that So4MoD can optimize data security while pursuing a well‐modularized MSA.

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Impacts, causes, and solutions of architectural smells in microservices: An industrial investigation

Cited by 7 publications

References 68 publications

DOMICO: Checking conformance between domain models and implementations

DOMICO: Checking conformance between domain models and implementations

An Empirical Analysis of Approach-Based Metrics Model for Architectural Erosion Detection

Towards a security‐optimized approach for the microservice‐oriented decomposition

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