Cognitive complexity points: a metric to evaluate the design of microservices-based applications

Abstract

The complexity of the software allows us to analyze how difficult to understand, implement and maintain the program can be. The metrics allow us to measure and estimate certain characteristics of the software to make decisions and corrective or preventive actions. The definition of the complexity of the microservices-based applications design is fundamental since it directly affects the performance of the application, development, testing, maintainability, storage (transactions and distributed queries), and the use and consumption of computational resources. In this paper, a cognitive complexity metric is proposed to evaluate the design and granularity of microservices-based applications, which define the required effort, or degree of difficulty to understand the microservices that make up the system. Typical cases were analyzed, which can appear in the design of microservices-based applications, the calculation of cognitive complexity was correct and consistent with the difficulty of understanding, maintaining, and developing a microservice system, therefore it is a viable option for analyzing complexity in microservices-based architecture.