Temporal Network Analysis of Microservice Architectural Degradation

TL;DR

This paper explores the application of temporal network analysis to microservice architectures, highlighting challenges in data collection and initial insights from a limited temporal network of 42 microservices over 7 time points.

Contribution

It discusses the challenges of constructing and analyzing temporal networks in microservice systems and provides a preliminary case study with a small temporal network.

Findings

Limited temporal network data (7 time points, 42 microservices) constrains analysis.

Identifies key challenges in obtaining temporal network data from microservices.

Highlights potential of temporal network analysis for understanding microservice architecture degradation.

Abstract

Microservice architecture can be modeled as a network of microservices making calls to each other, commonly known as the service dependency graph. Network Science can provide methods to study such networks. In particular, temporal network analysis is a branch of Network Science that analyzes networks evolving with time. In microservice systems, temporal networks can arise if we examine the architecture of the system across releases or monitor a deployed system using tracing. In this research summary paper, I discuss the challenges in obtaining temporal networks from microservice systems and analyzing them with the temporal network methods. In particular, the most complete temporal network that we could obtain contains 7 time instances and 42 microservices, which limits the potential analysis that could be applied.