Design and decomposition of Microservices Architecture: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Context: The adoption of Microservice Architectures has grown significantly as a result of their ability to overcome key limitations of monolithic systems, such as limited scalability, maintenance difficulties, and technological lock-in. However, the design of microservice-based systems remains a complex and non-trivial task. This underscores the need for well-defined methodologies and techniques to support practitioners and software architects throughout the microservice design process.

Objective: The objective of this study is to examine effective microservices design practices, microservice identification techniques, the tools employed to support design activities, and the factors that drive the decomposition of systems into new microservices.

Methods: A Systematic Literature Review was conducted following the guidelines established by the PRISMA framework. From 609 studies that were retrieved from the search execution, 150 were selected and analyzed to answer the research questions.

Results: This SLR contributes by examining design tools used for decomposition, analyzing microservice decomposition processes, identifying metrics for microservice decomposition, and framing microservice decomposition as a multi-objective optimization problem.

Conclusions: This study highlights the complexity and variability inherent in microservices design, as well as the limited availability of tools to support this process. The findings identify microservices communication and service decomposition as key challenges, with the majority of existing research focusing primarily on the decomposition of monolithic systems.