Decision Models for Selecting Patterns and Strategies in Microservices Systems and their Evaluation by Practitioners
This addresses the problem of pattern selection for microservices practitioners, but it is incremental as it builds on existing literature and focuses on decision support.
The study tackled the challenge of selecting and implementing microservices patterns and strategies by proposing decision models for four design areas, and evaluation with 24 practitioners showed they found the models effective as a guide.
Researchers and practitioners have recently proposed many Microservices Architecture (MSA) patterns and strategies covering various aspects of microservices system life cycle, such as service design and security. However, selecting and implementing these patterns and strategies can entail various challenges for microservices practitioners. To this end, this study proposes decision models for selecting patterns and strategies covering four MSA design areas: application decomposition into microservices, microservices security, microservices communication, and service discovery. We used peer-reviewed and grey literature to identify the patterns, strategies, and quality attributes for creating these decision models. To evaluate the familiarity, understandability, completeness, and usefulness of the decision models, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 microservices practitioners from 12 countries across five continents. Our evaluation results show that the practitioners found the decision models as an effective guide to select microservices patterns and strategies.