Microservice Architecture denotes a software architectural style for service-based software systems whereby business capabilities are encapsulated in autonomously developable and deployable services. To foster a more efficient development it is considered feasible to apply the means of Model-driven Development in order to handle the complexity of such a distributed system and avoid the manual creation of boilerplate code using code generation. In this paper, we present and evaluate two modeling approaches for microservice systems. The first approach is based on a set of domain-specific modeling languages and the second approach on the Unified Modeling Language. We evaluate both approaches in the context of an experiment conducted during a master’s course in informatics with 32 participants. We compare the modeling approaches based upon their achieved effectiveness and perceived efficiency, satisfaction, and accessibility of the students. We do this by evaluating the correctness of created models during an assignment and through a questionnaire. Our results indicate that both approaches are generally suited for modeling microservices. However, the students did commit fewer modeling errors while using the set of domain-specific modeling languages.
@techreport{doi:10.17170/kobra-202010302034,
author ={Sorgalla, Jonas and Rademacher, Florian and Sachweh, Sabine and Zündorf, Albert},
title ={Model-driven Development of Microservice Architecture: An Experiment on the Quality in Use of a UML- and a DSL-based Approach},
keywords ={004 and Softwarearchitektur and Mikroservice and Domänenspezifische Programmiersprache and Entwurfssprache},
copyright ={http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/},
language ={en},
year ={2020-04-15}
}