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From Monolith to Microservices: A Classification of Refactoring Approaches

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Software Engineering Aspects of Continuous Development and New Paradigms of Software Production and Deployment (DEVOPS 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11350))

Abstract

While the recently emerged Microservices architectural style is widely discussed in literature, it is difficult to find clear guidance on the process of refactoring legacy applications. The importance of the topic is underpinned by high costs and effort of a refactoring process which has several other implications, e.g. overall processes (DevOps) and team structure. Software architects facing this challenge are in need of selecting an appropriate strategy and refactoring technique. One of the most discussed aspects in this context is finding the right service granularity to fully leverage the advantages of a Microservices architecture. This study first discusses the notion of architectural refactoring and subsequently compares 10 existing refactoring approaches recently proposed in academic literature. The approaches are classified by the underlying decomposition technique and visually presented in the form of a decision guide for quick reference. The review yielded a variety of strategies to break down a monolithic application into independent services. With one exception, most approaches are only applicable under certain conditions. Further concerns are the significant amount of input data some approaches require as well as limited or prototypical tool support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Software Technology, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Jonas Fritzsch & Stefan Wagner

  2. Reutlingen University of Applied Sciences, ‎Reutlingen, Germany

    Justus Bogner & Alfred Zimmermann

Authors
  1. Jonas Fritzsch
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  2. Justus Bogner
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  3. Alfred Zimmermann
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  4. Stefan Wagner
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jonas Fritzsch .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France

    Jean-Michel Bruel

  2. Innopolis University, Innopolis, Russia

    Manuel Mazzara

  3. Innopolis University and Politecnico di Milano, Innopolis, Russia

    Bertrand Meyer

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Fritzsch, J., Bogner, J., Zimmermann, A., Wagner, S. (2019). From Monolith to Microservices: A Classification of Refactoring Approaches. In: Bruel, JM., Mazzara, M., Meyer, B. (eds) Software Engineering Aspects of Continuous Development and New Paradigms of Software Production and Deployment. DEVOPS 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11350. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06019-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-06019-0_10

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-06018-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-06019-0

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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