μJUNITER: Automated Unification of Microservices into Modular Monoliths for Versatile Software Architecture Migration

Although software architecture aims for long-term stability, architectural migrations may be necessary to adapt to evolving business needs and resource availability. In recent years, numerous migrations have occurred within backend architectures. While many of these migrations partition monoliths into microservices, several prominent enterprises have reported having to unite microservices into monoliths to reduce management and communication overheads. The required unification is typically manual, substantial, tedious, and error-prone for complex systems. This thesis presents a novel automated architectural refactoring that transforms a microservice system into a functionally equivalent monolith. Our refactoring relies on abstract syntax tree merging and control flow bridging to unite distributed components into a centralized system. We have implemented our approach as μJUNITER, an automated refactoring tool that operates on Java source files of Spring Boot microservices, producing Spring Boot modular monoliths. Evaluations conducted with third-party and synthetically generated microservice applications, with up to 100 microservices, demonstrate that μJUNITER's refactoring preserves the original system's functionality, as verified by end-to-end and back-end unit testing. The refactoring also reduced latency in certain cases and resource consumption in all cases. μJUNITER's refactoring saves manual programming effort proportional to the number of microservices and their level of inter-service interaction. As software architectures must adapt to changing trends, our approach can complement and enhance the existing automated toolset for architectural migration.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science & Applications

Department dc:contributor.department

Computer Science and Applications

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Martin, Joshua Scott

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Tilevich, Eli

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Gulzar, Muhammad Ali
• Sundararajah, Kirshanthan

• Software Architecture
• Architectural Migration
• Automated Refactoring
• Microservices
• Monoliths

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:42011

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/123848