Looking at performance metrics and scalability challenges in the context of microservices: a survey

Abstract

The use of microservices is a new trend in software engineering, dividing an application into several services. This concept allows programmers to write each microservice code using the better language and framework they know. We perceive that research on microservices aims mainly at composability, portability, and interface, leaving uncovered in surveys relevant quality concerns. Therefore, this article reports a survey focused on providing classification and analysis of studies on evaluating and improving performance in microservice-based applications. Our contributions are threefold: 1) an in-depth analysis of state of the art on microservices through the lens of performance; 2) a novel taxonomy to reclassify the current microservice initiatives, looking at software and hardware aspects that interfere in the execution of the application; 3) an analysis of trends and open research opportunities in the joint combination of performance and scalability applied to microservices. The article supports developers and organisations in defining standards, strategies, and technologies to model and code microservices applications by presenting practical and theoretical issues.