CharM: a model for characterizing the architecture of service-based systems

• Ano de defesa: 2023
• Autor(a) principal: Rosa, Thatiane de Oliveira
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Biblioteca Digitais de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Palavras-chave em Português: Arquitetura de software; Characterization model; Microservice; Microsserviço; Modelo de caracterização; Service-based system; Sistema baseado em serviço; Software architecture
• Link de acesso: https://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/45/45134/tde-27092023-165159/

Service-based architecture emerged to overcome software development challenges, such as difficulty to scale, low productivity, and strong dependence between elements. Microservice is a service-based architectural style that offers advantages, such as scalability, agility, resilience, and reuse. This architectural style has been well accepted and used in industry and has been the target of several academic studies. However, analyzing the state of the art and practice, we can notice a fuzzy limit when trying to classify and characterize the architecture of service-based systems. Furthermore, it is possible to realize that it is difficult to analyze the trade-offs to make decisions regarding the design and evolution of this kind of system. Some concrete examples of these decisions are related to how big the services should be, how they communicate, and how the data should be divided/shared. Based on this context, we developed the CharM, a model for characterizing the architecture of service-based systems that adopts microservices guidelines. To achieve this goal, we followed the guidelines of the Design Science Research in five iterations, composed of ad-hoc literature reviews, discussions with experts, two case studies, and a survey. The main contribution of this thesis is the CharM, which is an easily understandable architectural characterization model that helps professionals with different profiles to understand, document, and maintain the architecture of service-based systems.