Growing Software Applications by Incremental Development of Heterogeneous Micro-Applications Using Cellular Regeneration Concepts

Abstract

In this paper, the concepts of growing software applications by incremental development of heterogeneous micro-applications using cellular regeneration concepts are explored. The proposal is the move from homogeneous monolithic architectures to heterogeneous micro-architectures, to allow for application evolution. The focus is on growing legacy applications that will evolve to remain healthy. Cellular regeneration concepts are used to show that applications should always be regenerating, like cells living in an organism, to become resilient to events that cause disturbance and damage. Understanding regeneration can give insights into growing computational systems that are more resilient. A definition for micro-architectures and comparisons on how such an architecture differs from typical monolithic architectures are given. Concepts to allow applications to adapt to new and changing business and scientific computational needs are designed. Development and operation complexity is addressed to handle the increase in activity and tasks. We conclude with future states for micro-applications.