Microservices-based systems visualization

Abstract

The evolution of decentralized microservice-based systems is challenging. These challenges are classified into static and dynamic categories. Regarding the static perspective, documenting and visualizing the fluid application topology is something few have been able to accomplish. Building an architecture map of services design is a complicated task in its interpretation rather than construction. Therefore, the system-centric and up-to-date view became essential for such distributed systems. The dynamic perspective considers the process of investigation and service path detection. Therefore performing root cause analysis is a burdening task; such that tracing data is needed to be put in the right context to facilitate the investigation. Moreover, visualizing these traces over the traditional visualization techniques couldn't be feasible with the large number of microservices involved in the system. This paper proposes a visualization concept for microservices-based systems using the Augmented Reality (AR) technique, which merges these static and dynamic behaviors into a single centric view. In addition, we challenge the difficulty related to tracing and debugging an issue in such distributed systems. This concept is designed to work as a dynamic documentation and traceability platform for these systems. A proof of concept and a research study are implemented to show the viability and success of this proposal. CCS CONCEPTS• Software and its engineering → Software notations and tools; Integrated and visual development environments;

Visualizing Microservice Architecture in the Dynamic Perspective: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…This section presents the findings of the study by answering the research questions in separate subsections. [11] 2022 Microservices-based systems visualization: student research abstract [4] 2021 A method for monitoring the coupling evolution of microservice-based architectures [12] 2021 Automated Analysis of Distributed Tracing: Challenges and Research Directions [13] 2020 Graph-based root cause analysis for service-oriented and microservice architectures [14] 2021 Offline Trace Generation for Microservice Observability [15] 2017 MicroART: A Software Architecture Recovery Tool for Maintaining Microservice-Based Systems [16] 2017 Towards Recovering the Software Architecture of Microservice-Based Systems [17] 2020 Graph-based trace analysis for microservice architecture understanding and problem diagnosis [18] 2020 Architectural runtime models for integrating runtime observations and component-based models [19] 2016 Architectural Run-time Models for Performance and Privacy Analysis in Dynamic Cloud Applications [20] 2022 Code Smell Prioritization with Business Process Mining and Static Code Analysis: A Case Study [21] 2021 Enjoy your observability: an industrial survey of microservice tracing and analysis [22] 2021 Characterizing Microservice Dependency and Performance: Alibaba Trace Analysis [23] 2019 Graph-based and scenario-driven microservice analysis, retrieval, and testing [24] 2018 Using Service Dependency Graph to Analyze and Test Microservices [25] 2018 Execution-Based Model Profiling [26] 2017 Supporting Microservice Evolution [27] 2010 Dapper, a large-scale distributed systems tracing infrastructure [28] 2021 µViz: Visualization of Microservices [29] 2021 Temporal Relations Extraction and Analysis of Log Events for Micro-service Framework…”

“…Abdelfattah [11] describes a way to capture this graph in a 3D environment. By implementing this 3D model, the developers would be able to see the system from different angles and move the services around to create different topologies [11].…”

“…Abdelfattah [11] describes a way to capture this graph in a 3D environment. By implementing this 3D model, the developers would be able to see the system from different angles and move the services around to create different topologies [11]. In this proof of concept, three levels are implemented: the system level, the service level, and the function level.…”

“…The service level shows the perspective of the system from the services side. The function level attempts to visualize a UML communication diagram [11]. This study is one case of taking the service dependency graph and extending it to capture more information about the system.…”

“…In order to capture an entire visualization with current behavior included, combining or extending these representations is the next step. [11], [23], [24] [20]…”