Aspect-Oriented Modeling of Technology Heterogeneity in Microservice Architecture

Abstract

Microservice Architecture (MSA) is a novel approach for the development and deployment of service-based software systems. MSA puts a strong emphasis on loose coupling and high cohesion of services. This increases service-specific independence, which is considered to result in a better scalability, adaptability, and quality of software architectures. Another perceived benefit of adopting MSA is technology heterogeneity. Microservice teams are free to employ the technologies they deem to be most appropriate for service implementation and operation. However, technology heterogeneity increases the number of technologies in a microservice architecture with the risk to introduce technical debt and steeper learning curves for team members. In this paper, we present an approach to streamline the usage of different technologies in MSA-based software systems. It employs Aspect-oriented Modeling to make technology decisions in microservice architectures explicit and enable reasoning about them. Therefore, a set of languages for model-driven microservice development is extended with means to define, modularize, and apply MSA technology aspects. The usage and characteristics of our approach are shown and discussed in the context of a case study from the mobility domain.