Comparison of static analysis architecture recovery tools for microservice applications Simon Schneider, Alexander Bakhtin, Xiaozhou Li, Jacopo Soldani, Antonio Brogi, et al. Empirical Software Engineering, 2025 Architecture recovery tools help software engineers obtain an overview of the structure of their software systems during all phases of the software development life cycle. This is especially important for microservice applications because they consist of multiple interacting microservices, which makes it more challenging to oversee the architecture. Various tools and techniques for architecture recovery (also called architecture reconstruction) have been presented in academic and gray literature sources, but no overview and comparison of their accuracy exists. This paper presents the results of a multivocal literature review with the goal of identifying architecture recovery tools for microservice applications and a comparison of the identified tools’ architectural recovery accuracy. We focused on static tools since they can be integrated into fast-paced CI/CD pipelines. 13 such tools were identified from the literature and nine of them could be executed and compared on their capability of detecting different system characteristics. The best-performing tool exhibited an overall F1-score of 0.86. Additionally, the possibility of combining multiple tools to increase the recovery correctness was investigated, yielding a combination of four individual tools that achieves an F1-score of 0.91.
Analyzing Evolution of Microservice-based Systems Tomas Cerny, Gabriel Goulis, Samanta Perry, Malia Edmonds, Amr S. Abdelfattah, et al. Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering, 2025
Exploring microservice ownership and organizational coupling in open-source projects: an empirical study Xiaozhou Li, Dario Amoroso d’Aragona, Tomas Cerny, Valentina Lenarduzzi, Davide Taibi, et al. Computing, 2025 Together with the rising popularity of microservices, practitioners have started to pay more attention to the longevity and sustainability of microservices on the organizational level. Many argue—supported by Conway’s Law—that each microservice should be owned by a specific team or individual developer, although each team or developer may only contribute to a maximum of one microservice. With such a “one microservice per team/developer” strategy, the architecture shall be better maintained in a fashion of “high cohesion, low coupling”, which is a recommended setting for modular software systems. However, it is difficult to achieve such ideal circumstances when the coupling phenomena commonly exist therein, which are caused by cross-service calls and dependencies in microservice-based systems. Especially besides the couplings in functions and modules latent in the source code, it is also noticeable that the microservice project teams can suffer from high coupling issues regarding their cross-service contribution. Such an issue on the organizational level can inevitably result in technical debt and high managerial costs, which need to be detected and mitigated in time to prevent future losses. In this paper, we investigate the existence of the recommended “one microservice per team/developer” setting via an empirical study on 38 microservice-based open-sourced projects together with the different developer roles who are in charge of single or multiple microservices. Furthermore, by taking into account microservice ownership and cross-service contribution, we also investigate the organizational coupling of these projects and the developer roles that contribute to such couplings. The results show that it is rare that such “one microservice per team/developer” phenomenon exists in microservice projects, while the couplings are majorly caused by the leaders and major contributors of the microservices.
A Dataset of Microservices-based Open-Source Projects Dario Amoroso d'Aragona, Alexander Bakhtin, Xiaozhou Li, Ruoyu Su, Lauren Adams, et al. Proceedings 2024 IEEE ACM 21st International Conference on Mining Software Repositories MSR 2024, 2024
The Microservice Dependency Matrix Amr S. Abdelfattah, Tomas Cerny Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, 2023
One Microservice per Developer: Is This the Trend in OSS? Dario Amoroso d’Aragona, Xiaozhou Li, Tomas Cerny, Andrea Janes, Valentina Lenarduzzi, et al. Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, 2023
Navigating an Interdisciplinary Approach to Cybercrime Research Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2023
Benchmarks for End-to-End Microservices Testing Sheldon Smith, Ethan Robinson, Timmy Frederiksen, Trae Stevens, Tomas Cerny, et al. Proceedings 17th IEEE International Conference on Service Oriented System Engineering Sose 2023, 2023
Automated error log resolution: A case study Mark Fuller, Elizabeth Brighton, Micah Schiewe, Dipta Das, Tomas Cerny, et al. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, 2021
Database-Conscious End-to-End Testing for Reactive Systems using Containerization International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems Iceis Proceedings, 2021
On Relating Code Smells to Security Vulnerabilities Abdulrahman Abu Elkhail, Tomas Cerny Proceedings 5th IEEE International Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud Bigdatasecurity 2019 5th IEEE International Conference on High Performance and Smart Computing Hpsc 2019 and 4th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Data and Security IDS 2019, 2019
Aspect-driven context-aware services Karel Cemus, Filip Klimes, Tomas Cerny Proceedings of the 2017 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems Fedcsis 2017, 2017
Survey on concern separation in service integration Tomas Cerny, Michael J. Donahoo Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, 2016
Aspect-driven design of information systems Karel Cemus, Tomas Cerny Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, 2014
Impact of user interface generation on maintenance Tomas Cerny, Vaclav Chalupa, Michael J. Donahoo Csae 2012 Proceedings 2012 IEEE International Conference on Computer Science and Automation Engineering, 2012
Towards smart user interface design Tomas Cerny, Vaclav Chalupa, Michael J. Donahoo 2012 International Conference on Information Science and Applications Icisa 2012, 2012
Model-driven rich form generation Information, 2012
Towards a smart, self-scaling cooperative web cache Tomáš Černý, Petr Praus, Slávka Jaroměřská, Luboš Matl, Michael J. Donahoo Lecture Notes in Computer Science Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics, 2012
Debt environment in computer science education 3rd International Multi Conference on Complexity Informatics and Cybernetics Imcic 2012 Proceedings, 2012
Key Developer Roles and Organizational Coupling in Microservices: A Longitudinal Analysis X Li, N Mani, JS Rodriguez, T Cerny arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.25804 , 2026 2026
Analyzing Evolution of Microservice-Based Systems: Vision—An Extensible Methodology for Formal Software Verification in Microservice Systems R Gomez, E Elsayed, E Zarate, SG Dak, T Cerny Preprints , 2026 2026
Microservice Logs Analysis Employing AI: A Systematic Literature Review MA Uddin, S Weerasinghe, D Gajewski, M Akbarsharifi, R Akbarsharifi, ... Journal of Systems and Software, 112786 , 2026 2026 Citations: 2
Empirical Insights into Microservice Language Heterogeneity in Practice AS Abdelfattah, T Cerny, M Elsayed 2025 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and … , 2025 2025
Software architecture reconstruction methods for microservice systems T Cerny, D Kozak, AEMAS AISHA US Patent App. 19/074,164 , 2025 2025
Generative AI for software architecture. Applications, challenges, and future directions M Esposito, X Li, S Moreschini, N Ahmad, T Cerny, K Vaidhyanathan, ... Journal of Systems and Software, 112607 , 2025 2025 Citations: 61
SAVAT: A Tool for Visualizing the Impact of Changes in Microservices AK Rahmani, GE Goulis, D Kozák, T Cerny, T Vojnar European Conference on Software Architecture, 3-11 , 2025 2025
Assessing microservice system evolution through quantitative reasoning T Cerny, AEMAS AISHA US Patent App. 19/066,515 , 2025 2025
Comparison of static analysis architecture recovery tools for microservice applications S Schneider, A Bakhtin, X Li, J Soldani, A Brogi, T Cerny, R Scandariato, ... Empirical Software Engineering 30 (5), 128 , 2025 2025 Citations: 16
UWB-PostureGuard: A Privacy-Preserving RF Sensing System for Continuous Ergonomic Sitting Posture Monitoring H Li, Z Qi, S He, K Peng, S Tan, Y Ren, T Cerny, J Zhao, Z Wang arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.11115 , 2025 2025 Citations: 3
Women in Software Engineering: The Sinking Flagship of US Technological Pride T Cerny 2025 IEEE International Conference on Service-Oriented System Engineering … , 2025 2025
Initial Review: Simplifying Attack Surface Scoring for Software Systems Y Rajbhandari, R Maharjan, S Shrestha, T Cerny 2025 IEEE International Conference on Service-Oriented System Engineering … , 2025 2025
Attack Surface Score for Software Systems Y Rajbhandari, R Maharjan, S Shrestha, T Cerny Future Internet 17 (7), 305 , 2025 2025 Citations: 1
A Case Study on Monolith to Microservices Decomposition with Variational Autoencoder-Based Graph Neural Network R Maharjan, K Sooksatra, T Cerny, Y Rajbhandari, S Shrestha Future Internet 17 (7), 303 , 2025 2025 Citations: 7
Analyzing evolution of microservice-based systems T Cerny, G Goulis, S Perry, M Edmonds, AS Abdelfattah, M Esposito, ... Proceedings of the 33rd ACM International Conference on the Foundations of … , 2025 2025 Citations: 2
Deriving Microservice Architectural Perspectives Using Static Code Analysis for C\# Platform AS Abdelfattah, JY Salazar, T Cerny 2025 IEEE/ACM International Workshop New Trends in Software Architecture … , 2025 2025 Citations: 1
Semantic dependency in microservice architecture AS Abdelfattah, KE Cordes, A Medina, T Cerny 2025 IEEE/ACM 22nd International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse … , 2025 2025 Citations: 7
Exploring microservice ownership and organizational coupling in open-source projects: an empirical study X Li, DA d’Aragona, T Cerny, V Lenarduzzi, D Taibi, A Janes Springer , 2025 2025 Citations: 5
Multivocal study on microservice dependencies AS Abdelfattah, T Cerny, MSH Chy, MA Uddin, S Perry, C Brown, ... Journal of Systems and Software 222, 112334 , 2025 2025 Citations: 11
Toward organizational decoupling in microservices through key developer allocation X Li, N Ahmad, T Cerny, A Janes, V Lenarduzzi, D Taibi 2025 IEEE 22nd International Conference on Software Architecture Companion … , 2025 2025 Citations: 4
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
Contextual understanding of microservice architecture: current and future directions T Cerny, MJ Donahoo, M Trnka ACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review 17 (4), 29-45 , 2018 2018 Citations: 343
On Microservice Analysis and Architecture Evolution: A Systematic Mapping Study V Bushong, AS Abdelfattah, AA Maruf, D Das, A Lehman, E Jaroszewski, ... Applied Sciences 11 (17) , 2021 2021 Citations: 113
Microservice architecture reconstruction and visualization techniques: A review T Cerny, AS Abdelfattah, V Bushong, A Al Maruf, D Taibi 2022 IEEE International Conference on Service-Oriented System Engineering … , 2022 2022 Citations: 112
Survey of Authentication and Authorization for the Internet of Things M Trnka, T Cerny, N Stickney Security and Communication Networks 2018 (1), 4351603 , 2018 2018 Citations: 110
Disambiguation and comparison of soa, microservices and self-contained systems T Cerny, MJ Donahoo, J Pechanec Proceedings of the International Conference on research in adaptive and … , 2017 2017 Citations: 98
Aspects of quality in Internet of Things (IoT) solutions: A systematic mapping study BS Ahmed, M Bures, K Frajtak, T Cerny IEEE Access 7, 13758-13780 , 2019 2019 Citations: 94
Automated code-smell detection in microservices through static analysis: A case study A Walker, D Das, T Cerny Applied Sciences 10 (21), 7800 , 2020 2020 Citations: 93
Internet of things: Current challenges in the quality assurance and testing methods M Bures, T Cerny, BS Ahmed International conference on information science and applications, 625-634 , 2018 2018 Citations: 82
On vulnerability and security log analysis: A systematic literature review on recent trends J Svacina, J Raffety, C Woodahl, B Stone, T Cerny, M Bures, D Shin, ... Proceedings of the International Conference on Research in Adaptive and … , 2020 2020 Citations: 80
Systematic Review of Authentication and Authorization Advancements for the Internet of Things M Trnka, AS Abdelfattah, A Shrestha, M Coffey, T Cerny Sensors 22 (4) , 2022 2022 Citations: 67
Catalog and detection techniques of microservice anti-patterns and bad smells: A tertiary study T Cerny, AS Abdelfattah, AA Maruf, A Janes, D Taibi Journal of Systems and Software , 2023 2023 Citations: 66
Open-source tools and benchmarks for code-clone detection: past, present, and future trends A Walker, T Cerny, E Song ACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review 19 (4), 28-39 , 2020 2020 Citations: 65
Generative AI for software architecture. Applications, challenges, and future directions M Esposito, X Li, S Moreschini, N Ahmad, T Cerny, K Vaidhyanathan, ... Journal of Systems and Software, 112607 , 2025 2025 Citations: 61
Detecting hallucinations in large language model generation: A token probability approach E Quevedo, JY Salazar, R Koerner, P Rivas, T Cerny World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering & Applied Computing … , 2024 2024 Citations: 60
Using microservice telemetry data for system dynamic analysis A Al Maruf, A Bakhtin, T Cerny, D Taibi 2022 IEEE international conference on service-oriented system engineering … , 2022 2022 Citations: 57
Microvision: Static analysis-based approach to visualizing microservices in augmented reality T Cerny, AS Abdelfattah, V Bushong, A Al Maruf, D Taibi 2022 IEEE International Conference on Service-Oriented System Engineering … , 2022 2022 Citations: 56
Advancing static code analysis with language-agnostic component identification M Schiewe, J Curtis, V Bushong, T Cerny IEEE Access 10, 30743-30761 , 2022 2022 Citations: 55
Visualizing microservice architecture in the dynamic perspective: A systematic mapping study ME Gortney, PE Harris, T Cerny, A Al Maruf, M Bures, D Taibi, P Tisnovsky IEEE Access 10, 119999-120012 , 2022 2022 Citations: 54
Roadmap to Reasoning in Microservice systems: A Rapid Review AS Abdelfattah, T Cerny Applied Sciences 13 (3) , 2023 2023 Citations: 50
Context-sensitive, cross-platform user interface generation M Macik, T Cerny, P Slavik Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, 1-13 , 2014 2014 Citations: 49
