On Code Analysis Opportunities and Challenges for Enterprise Systems and Microservices

Abstract

Code analysis brings excellent benefits to software development, maintenance, and quality assurance. Various tools can uncover code defects or even software bugs in a range of seconds. For many projects and developers, the code analysis tools became essential in their daily routines. However, how can code analysis help in an enterprise environment? Enterprise software solutions grow in scale and complexity. These solutions no longer involve only plain objects and basic language constructs but operate with various components and mechanisms simplifying the development of such systems. Enterprise software vendors have adopted various development and design standards; however, there is a gap between what constructs the enterprise frameworks use and what current code analysis tools recognize. This manuscript aims to challenge the mainstream research directions of code analysis and motivate for a transition towards code analysis of enterprise systems with interesting problems and opportunities. In particular, this manuscript addresses selected enterprise problems apparent for monolithic and distributed enterprise solutions. It also considers challenges related to the recent architectural push towards a microservice architecture. Along with open-source proof-of-concept prototypes to some of the challenges, this manuscript elaborates on code analysis directions and their categorization. Furthermore, it suggests one possible perspective of the problem area using aspect-oriented programming.

On Microservice Analysis and Architecture Evolution: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…A few papers discussed key differences between analyzing microservice architecture in comparison to other architectures. Cerny et al [14] discuss some pitfalls that traditional code analysis has with addressing microservice systems, namely that it overlooks important enterprise development framework constructs, which are key for building enterprise microservice systems. Some papers treat the relationships between Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and microservices differently.…”

“…Similarly, the paper by Auer et al [64] surveys developers to create a framework to assist companies in determining if they should migrate their monolithic system to a microservice-based one. Cerny et al [14] explain the potential pitfalls of converting a system from a monolithic architecture to a microservice architecture while also discussing the value of static-code analysis in microservice systems. Nunes et al [49] aim to assist the decomposition of monolithic applications to microservice-based ones by proposing the decomposition be done by identifying where a business transaction is divided into several transactional contexts.…”

“…Both Toledo et al [63] and Auer et al [64] have conducted surveys for this purpose, with the former survey conducted among employees working with microservices to determine the most critical architectural technical debts, and the latter conducted among developers to create an assessment framework on whether or not a system should make the switch from monolithic to microservice-based architecture. Cerny et al [14] conducted a survey as well, focused on determining whether traditional static-code analysis is fit for use in the microservice architecture. Zhou et al [45] first use an empirical survey to gather information on challenges faced by developers and then evaluates the effectiveness of execution tracing for the purpose of debugging, using a benchmark the authors developed.…”

“…Other goals involve analysis of the software architecture [14,28]. Several works discuss the inherent challenges in analyzing microservices versus other architectures such as monolithic systems, or SOA [1,63].…”

“…Finally, many works [1,14,[63][64][65] have performed survey on the state of the art on related topics. Table 6 summarizes specific goals assessed in this study.…”