From Domain-Driven Design To Microservice Architecture: A Systematic Mapping Focused On Modernization of Legacy Systems

Microservice architecture (MSA) has drawn considerable attention within academia and industry for both new system development and legacy system modernization. Domain-driven design (DDD) is an approach to software development that prioritizes the effective modeling of the core business domain, which facilitates the division of a software system into smaller and more manageable contexts. Although there is a convergence of concepts between MSA and DDD, the combination of these research areas presents considerable challenges concerning the methodological requirements and the application domains. To the best knowledge, there is a lack of comprehensive analysis of how the DDD approach can support microservice development, especially in the software modernization scenario. Aiming to address this issue, this paper presents a systematic mapping study on the modernization of legacy systems to MSA based on the DDD approach. Finally, this paper also presents a discussion of the main findings of this study.