Master Thesis MSTR-2020-95

BibliographyBeck, Samuel: Evaluating human-computer interfaces for specification and comprehension of transient behavior in microservice-based software systems.
University of Stuttgart, Faculty of Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Information Technology, Master Thesis No. 95 (2020).
109 pages, english.
Abstract

Modern software systems are subject to constant change while operating in production. New agile development methods such as continuous deployment and DevOps enable developers to deploy code changes frequently. Also, failures and self-adaptation through mechanisms such as elastic scaling and resilience patterns introduce changes into a system during runtime. For that reason, these systems that become more complex and distributed continuously exhibit transient behavior, the state that occurs while transitioning from one state to another. To make statements about a system’s reliability and performance, it is imperative that this transient behavior is specified in non-functional requirements and that stakeholders can review whether these requirements are met. However, due to the complexity of this behavior and the accompanying specifications, only experts can achieve this. This thesis aims to make the specification of non-functional requirements for, and the comprehension of, transient behavior in microservice systems more accessible, particularly for stakeholders that lack expert knowledge about transient behavior. To achieve this, novel approaches are explored that utilize modern human-computer interaction methods to facilitate this problem. At first, the state of the art in transient behavior in software systems, human-computer interaction, and software visualization is presented. Subsequently, expert interviews are conducted to understand how transient behavior is handled in practice and which requirements experts have to an envisioned solution. Based on this, a concept for a solution is proposed, which integrates different visualizations with a chatbot, and implemented as a prototype. Finally, the prototype is evaluated in an expert study. The evaluation shows that the approach can support software architects and DevOps engineers to create and verify specifications for transient behavior. However, it also reveals that the prototype can still be improved further. Furthermore, it was shown that the integration of a chatbot into the solution was not helpful for the participants. In conclusion, human-computer interaction and visualization methods can be applied to the problems of specifying and analyzing transient behavior to support software architects and engineers. The developed prototype shows potential for the exploration of transient behavior. The evaluation also revealed many opportunities for future improvements.

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Department(s)University of Stuttgart, Institute of Software Technology, Software Quality and Architecture
Superviser(s)van Hoorn, Dr. Andre; Frank, Sebastian; Merino. Dr. Leonel
Entry dateDecember 22, 2021
   Publ. Computer Science