A Tertiary Study on Microservices: Research Trends and Recommendations

Abstract

The development and adoption of microservices, as one of the most promising directions for developing heterogeneous distributed software systems, have been driven by dynamic changes in business and technology. In addition to the development of new applications, a significant aspect of microservices is the migration from legacy monolithic systems to microservice architectures. Such development trends are accompanied by an increase in the number of primary and secondary publications addressing microservices, highlighting the need to systematize research at a higher level. The objective of this study is to comprehensively analyze secondary studies in the field of microservices from the following five aspects: (1) publishing trends, (2) quality trends of secondary studies, (3) research trends, (4) domains of implementation, and (5) future research directions. The study follows the guidelines for conducting a systematic literature review. The findings were derived from 44 secondary studies published in the period from January 2016 to January 2023. These studies were organized and analyzed to address the five proposed research questions pertaining to the study objectives. The findings suggest that the most promising research directions are related to the development, implementation, and validation of new approaches, methods, and tools that encompass all the phases of the life cycle. Additionally, these research directions have applications in a variety of business and human life domains. Recommendations for further literature reviews relate to improvement of quality assessment of selected studies, more detailed review of architecture quality attributes, inquiry of human factor issues, and certain maintenance and operation issues. From the methodological aspect, recommendations relate to using social science qualitative methods for more detailed analysis of selected studies, and inclusion of gray literature that will bring the real experience of experts from industry.