3–4 Apr 2023
Manchester Central Convention Centre
Europe/London timezone

On the Temporal Behaviour of a Large-Scale Microservice Architecture

4 Apr 2023, 15:30
15m
Charter 1, 2, 3 (Manchester Central)

Charter 1, 2, 3

Manchester Central

Windmill St, Manchester, M2 3GX, United Kingdom.
Standard Presentation Lightning Talks UKNOF51

Speaker

Giles Winchester (University of Sussex)

Description

Microservices are fast becoming the predominant architectural style for orchestrating online services due to the advantages they can bestow over monolithic systems. However, as microservice architectures grow in size they quickly become complicated to understand and manage. Their characteristics raise the question as to whether they may behave like complex systems. In this work, we use tools from graph theory to analyse the static and temporal dependency structure of a large-scale microservice architecture. We find that the dependency structure can fluctuate significantly at run time and further, that it can be clustered into distinct and persistent states with recognisable characteristics. Importantly, we show that these states can have functional implications for the performance of the microservice architecture. These early findings suggest that microservices may indeed behave like complex systems and, as such, would benefit from complex systems thinking when approaching their management and development.

Talk Duration 10 Minutes Presentation (+5 Minutes Q&A)
Presentation delivery In-person at the meeting venue
Your consent for us to publish your name and affiliation as a Speaker on the UKNOF50 website Yes

Primary author

Giles Winchester (University of Sussex)

Co-authors

Prof. George Parisis (University of Sussex) Prof. Luc Berthouze (University of Sussex)

Presentation materials