[DZone Research] Developing Microservices

This post is taken from the Key Research Findings in the 2018 DZone Guide to Microservices: Speed, Agility, Flexibility. 

Introduction

For the 2018 DZone Guide to Microservices, we surveyed developers, architects, and technologists from across the software and IT industry. We received 682 responses with a 79% completion rate. Based on these responses we've put together an article on how respondents are using microservices in development. 

DevOps and Developing Microservice-Based Applications

Among our general survey population, 70% (434 respondents) reported implementing DevOps processes such as continuous delivery. Of those 434 respondents, 39% told us they use microservice architecture in both development and production, 16% use microservices in development only, and another 6% use microservices in production only. Adding these all up, 61% of the 434 respondents who work with DevOps processes use microservices in some capacity when developing applications. The mean number of applications respondents are currently running with a microservices architecture came out to five; the highest number of apps reported was 50 and the lowest 0. And, of those respondents who have refactored legacy apps to take advantage of a microservice architecture, the mean number of refactored apps per respondent came out to two, with 15 being the highest number of applications reported.

When asked for the language they feel best supports this type of microservices-based development, an overwhelming majority, coming in at 82% of respondents, said Java. The second most popular option was the JavaScript-based runtime environment, Node.js, with a 40% adoption rate among survey takers. And, with a 31% adoption rate, client-side JavaScript and Python also proved rather well-liked. If we compare the adoption rate of these languages to our data on the types of applications that respondents develop (and how respondents choose to secure their microservices), we get some intriguing results.

Among both web application (83%) and enterprise business application (85%) developers, Java proved the most popular language. Python, similarly, was statistically stable between these two user groups, with a 32% adoption rate among web app developers and a 31% use rate among enterprise business devs. When we get to the data on client-side JavaScript and Node.js, however, interesting fluctuations appear. While 45% of web app developers reported using Node.js, only 34% reported using client-side JavaScript for their microservices; among enterprise business devs, 42% reported using Node.js, while only 28% claimed to use JavaScript on the client-side. This is interesting to note, as one of the main advantages of Node.js is the ability to code both server-side and client-side applications in the JavaScript language. And yet, we see far more respondents interested in using Node.js for their microservices-based development than client-side JavaScript.

When we asked respondents how they secure their microservices, 47% said JSON web tokens, 43% reported using OAuth 2, and 28% told us they implement user authentication. When we compare these numbers to the data on the top microservices-friendly languages, we find that JSON web tokens proved more popular among these respondents than among the general survey population. 55% of those who use Node.js for microservices development reported using JSON web tokens, 52% who use JavaScript use JSON web tokens, and 49% who use either Java or Python use JSON web tokens to secure their microservices. User authentication, too, proved more popular among users of these four languages than the general population, while OAuth 2’s adoption rates witnessed far less fluctuation.

Conclusion: Devs Love Microservices, Corporate Culture Needs to Shift

Despite the popularity of microservices, this architectural pattern comes with its own set of challenges. 58% of respondents reported that monitoring can present an issue when building apps with microservices. Fascinatingly, the second most oft-reported challenge of building apps with microservices was changing the culture to be open to microservices. 40% of respondents told us cultural shift presents an issue. Though other, more technical, challenges were reported — like changing API contracts (34%) and communicating between microservices (32%) — it appears that organizational structure has become a bigger roadblock to microservice adoption.

This post is taken from the Key Research Findings in the 2018 DZone Guide to Microservices: Speed, Agility, Flexibility.