Migration to Microservices: A Comparative Study of Decomposition Strategies and Analysis Metrics

Abstract: The microservices architectural style is widely favored for its scalability, reusability, and easy maintainability, prompting increased adoption by developers. However, transitioning from a monolithic to a microservices-based architecture is intricate and costly. In response, we present a novel method utilizing clustering to identify potential microservices in a given monolithic application. Our approach employs a density-based clustering algorithm considering static analysis, structural, and semantic relationships between classes, ensuring a functionally and contextually coherent partitioning. To assess the reliability of our microservice suggestion approach, we conducted an in-depth analysis of hyperparameter sensitivity and compared it with two established clustering algorithms. A comprehensive comparative analysis involved seven applications, evaluating against six baselines, utilizing a dataset of four open-source Java projects. Metrics assessed the quality of generated microservices. Furthermore, we meticulously compared our suggested microservices with manually identified ones in three microservices-based applications. This comparison provided a nuanced understanding of our approach's efficacy and reliability. Our methodology demonstrated promising outcomes, showcasing remarkable effectiveness and commendable stability.