Contrastive Learning-Enhanced Large Language Models for Monolith-to-Microservice Decomposition

TL;DR

This paper introduces MonoEmbed, a novel LLM-based method using contrastive learning to automate monolith-to-microservice decomposition, improving the quality and efficiency of the process.

Contribution

It presents MonoEmbed, a new approach leveraging contrastive learning and LLMs for automated, effective microservice decomposition from monolithic applications.

Findings

Fine-tuned models outperform pre-trained models in representation quality.

MonoEmbed achieves higher cohesion and balance in microservice partitions.

Benchmark results show superior performance over existing methods.

Abstract

As Monolithic applications evolve, they become increasingly difficult to maintain and improve, leading to scaling and organizational issues. The Microservices architecture, known for its modularity, flexibility and scalability, offers a solution for large-scale applications allowing them to adapt and meet the demand on an ever increasing user base. Despite its advantages, migrating from a monolithic to a microservices architecture is often costly and complex, with the decomposition step being a significant challenge. This research addresses this issue by introducing MonoEmbed, a Language Model based approach for automating the decomposition process. MonoEmbed leverages state-of-the-art Large Language Models (LLMs) and representation learning techniques to generate representation vectors for monolithic components, which are then clustered to form microservices. By evaluating various pre-trained models and applying fine-tuning techniques such as Contrastive Learning and Low Rank Adaptation (LoRA), MonoEmbed aims to optimize these representations for microservice partitioning. The evaluation of the fine-tuned models showcases that they were able to significantly improve the quality of the representation vectors when compared with pre-trained models and traditional representations. The proposed approach was benchmarked against existing decomposition methods, demonstrating superior performance in generating cohesive and balanced microservices for monolithic applications with varying scales.