Contextual understanding of microservice architecture: current and future directions

Current industry trends in enterprise architectures indicate movement from Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) to Microservices. By understanding the key differences between these two approaches and their features, we can design a more effective Microservice architecture by avoiding SOA pitfalls. To do this, we must know why this shift is happening and how key SOA functionality is addressed by key features of the Microservice-based system. Unfortunately, Microservices do not address all SOA shortcomings. In addition, Microservices introduce new challenges. This work provides a detailed analysis of the differences between these two architectures and their features. Next, we describe both research and industry perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of both architectural directions. Finally, we perform a systematic mapping study related to Microservice research, identifying interest and challenges in multiple categories from a range of recent research.