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Register a new userDesign, Monitoring, and Testing of Microservices Systems: The Practitioners Perspective
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Added by
Peng Liang
Publication date
2021
fields
Informatics Engineering
and research's language is
English
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Context: Microservices Architecture (MSA) has received significant attention in the software industry. However, little empirical evidence exists on design, monitoring, and testing of microservices systems. Objective: This research aims to gain a deep understanding of how microservices systems are designed, monitored, and tested in the industry. Method: A mixed-methods study was conducted with 106 survey responses and 6 interviews from microservices practitioners. Results: The main findings are: (1) a combination of domain-driven design and business capability is the most used strategy to decompose an application into microservices, (2) over half of the participants used architecture evaluation and architecture implementation when designing microservices systems, (3) API gateway and Backend for frontend patterns are the most used MSA patterns, (4) resource usage and load balancing as monitoring metrics, log management and exception tracking as monitoring practices are widely used, (5) unit and end-to-end testing are the most used testing strategies, and (6) the complexity of microservices systems poses challenges for their design, monitoring, and testing, for which there are no dedicated solutions. Conclusions: Our findings reveal that more research is needed to (1) deal with microservices complexity at the design level, (2) handle security in microservices systems, and (3) address the monitoring and testing challenges through dedicated solutions.
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Background: In recent years, Low-code development (LCD) is growing rapidly, and Gartner and Forrester have predicted that the use of LCD is very promising. Giant companies, such as Microsoft, Mendix, and Outsystems have also launched their LCD platforms. Aim: In this work, we explored two popular online developer communities, Stack Overflow (SO) and Reddit, to provide insights on the characteristics and challenges of LCD from a practitioners perspective. Method: We used two LCD related terms to search the relevant posts in SO and extracted 73 posts. Meanwhile, we explored three LCD related subreddits from Reddit and collected 228 posts. We extracted data from these posts and applied the Constant Comparison method to analyze the descriptions, benefits, and limitations and challenges of LCD. For platforms and programming languages used in LCD, implementation units in LCD, supporting technologies of LCD, types of applications developed by LCD, and domains that use LCD, we used descriptive statistics to analyze and present the results. Results: Our findings show that: (1) LCD may provide a graphical user interface for users to drag and drop with little or even no code; (2) the equipment of out-of-the-box units (e.g., APIs and components) in LCD platforms makes them easy to learn and use as well as speeds up the development; (3) LCD is particularly favored in the domains that have the need for automated processes and workflows; and (4) practitioners have conflicting views on the advantages and disadvantages of LCD. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that researchers should clearly define the terms when they refer to LCD, and developers should consider whether the characteristics of LCD are appropriate for their projects.
Being able to access software in daily life is vital for everyone, and thus accessibility is a fundamental challenge for software development. However, given the number of accessibility issues reported by many users, e.g., in app reviews, it is not clear if accessibility is widely integrated into current software projects and how software projects address accessibility issues. In this paper, we report a study of the critical challenges and benefits of incorporating accessibility into software development and design. We applied a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach for gathering data from 15 interviews and 365 survey respondents from 26 countries across five continents to understand how practitioners perceive accessibility development and design in practice. We got 44 statements grouped into eight topics on accessibility from practitioners viewpoints and different software development stages. Our statistical analysis reveals substantial gaps between groups, e.g., practitioners have Direct v.s. Indirect accessibility relevant work experience when they reviewed the summarized statements. These gaps might hinder the quality of accessibility development and design, and we use our findings to establish a set of guidelines to help practitioners be aware of accessibility challenges and benefit factors. We also propose some remedies to resolve the gaps and to highlight key future research directions.
Requirements Engineering (RE) is a process that requires high collaboration between various roles in software engineering (SE), such as requirements engineers, stakeholders, developers, etc. Their demographics, views, understanding of technologies, working styles, communication and collaboration capabilities make RE highly human dependent. Identifying how human aspects such as motivation, domain knowledge, communication skills, personality, emotions, culture, etc might impact RE would help us to improve the RE activities and SE in general. The aim of this study is to understand current industry perspectives on the influence of human aspects on RE. We surveyed 111 software practitioners involved in RE activities, and our findings show that 86.4% of participants agree, that the success of RE greatly depends on the people involved in it. Software practitioners consider motivation, domain knowledge, attitude, communication skills and personality as highly important human aspects when involved in RE. A set of factors, we categorize as human/social and technical were identified as software practitioners motivation factors when involved in RE activities, where the majority of are motivated due to human/social factors. Furthermore, our findings suggest that software practitioners personality characteristics should also be paid more attention to as they are important when conducting RE effectively.
Software engineering bots - automated tools that handle tedious tasks - are increasingly used by industrial and open source projects to improve developer productivity. Current research in this area is held back by a lack of consensus of what software engineering bots (DevBots) actually are, what characteristics distinguish them from other tools, and what benefits and challenges are associated with DevBot usage. In this paper we report on a mixed-method empirical study of DevBot usage in industrial practice. We report on findings from interviewing 21 and surveying a total of 111 developers. We identify three different personas among DevBot users (focusing on autonomy, chat interfaces, and smartness), each with different definitions of what a DevBot is, why developers use them, and what they struggle with. We conclude that future DevBot research should situate their work within our framework, to clearly identify what type of bot the work targets, and what advantages practitioners can expect. Further, we find that there currently is a lack of general purpose smart bots that go beyond simple automation tools or chat interfaces. This is problematic, as we have seen that such bots, if available, can have a transformative effect on the projects that use them.
Context. Re-architecting monolithic systems with Microservices-based architecture is a common trend. Various companies are migrating to Microservices for different reasons. However, making such an important decision like re-architecting an entire system must be based on real facts and not only on gut feelings. Objective. The goal of this work is to propose an evidence-based decision support framework for companies that need to migrate to Microservices, based on the analysis of a set of characteristics and metrics they should collect before re-architecting their monolithic system. Method. We designed this study with a mixed-methods approach combining a Systematic Mapping Study with a survey done in the form of interviews with professionals to derive the assessment framework based on Grounded Theory. Results. We identified a set consisting of information and metrics that companies can use to decide whether to migrate to Microservices or not. The proposed assessment framework, based on the aforementioned metrics, could be useful for companies if they need to migrate to Microservices and do not want to run the risk of failing to consider some important information.
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