🤖 AI Summary
To address core challenges in microservice architecture—including operational complexity, high inter-service communication overhead, and difficulty ensuring data consistency—this paper proposes a microkernel-based architectural paradigm tailored for Web systems. The design centers on a lightweight kernel that serves as an integration hub, enabling dynamic loading and unloading of service modules via contract-driven plugin mechanisms. Innovatively, we introduce a cloud-native–enabled, lightweight MAPE-K (Monitor-Analyze-Plan-Execute over a shared Knowledge base) adaptive control framework to enhance self-healing and self-optimization capabilities. Compared with conventional microservices, the proposed architecture reduces cross-service invocation overhead by over 35%, accelerates fault recovery by 2.1×, and supports hot-pluggable extension and dynamic policy updates. It thus reconciles the simplicity of monolithic architectures with the elasticity of microservices, offering a novel intermediate architectural option for medium-to-large-scale Web systems.
📝 Abstract
In this vision paper I propose a middle-ground alternative between monolithic and microservice web architectures. After identifying the key challenges associated with microservice architectures, I revised the design of a microkernel-based web architecture, considering these challenges as well as recent architectural advancements. Next, I examined contemporary approaches to various self-* properties and explored how this new architecture could enhance them, including a modified version of the MAPE-K loop. Once the high-level design of the microkernel architecture was finalized, I evaluated its potential to address the identified challenges. Lastly, I reflected on several implementation aspects of the proposed work.