Lesson $1\mathrm{.}2-$ Lab $($Case Study$)$

Fabricom is a software development consulting company that collaborates with partner organizations

across the world. Fabricom has a traditional web$-$based helpdesk application that follows standard

industry practices. The application was built without using the concepts of microservices; that is$,$ it was

built as a monolithic application.

Currently, the helpdesk application provides customer support for a mobile phone vendor. This

application provides the following capabilities:

$$ Account management: Provides the user account management functionality

$($add$/$modify$/$delete$).$ Authentication is managed through usernames and passwords on a local

database to keep it simple.

$$ Incident creation and management: Provides the ability to submit new incidents along with

viewing and updating existing ones.

$$ Product catalog management $($admin only$)$: Stores and manages the product catalog based on

the product sold and inventory.

$$ Appointment setup: Provides ability to set up an appointment with a support professional.

$$ Search: Provides capability to search for existing issues and resolutions as well as search the

product catalog.

$$ Message boards: Customer community board for customers to collaborate and help each other.

The technologies used to build the application include:

$$ User interface: HTML$,$ JavaScript, and JQuery

$$ Middle layer: Java, Spring, Jersey and Hibernate

$$ Database: MySQL

Application architecture

The application consists of a three$-$tier architecture composed of a database, business logic$/$services$,$

and a user interface.$$ The application was initially written to support approximately $500,000$ customers on the web

where they can open work tickets for their issues.

$$ All features are equally important and should be available at all times.

$$ The application is horizontally scalable.

$$ Users are allowed to search for existing solutions to reduce the number of tickets submitted.

Now, five years later:

$$ The number of users has grown to $1\mathrm{.}5$ million and is expected to grow to $5$ million over the next two

years due to a boom in the mobile space.

$$ The top two features being utilized by most users are ticketing and search.

$$ There are very few changes in usage of features like message boards.

$$ Traffic peaks twice a year: early summer $($June$)$ and the holiday season $($November & December$).$

$$ The number of times ticketing services is affected due to impact of other services such as product

catalog, has grown considerably.

$$ The technological advances in natural language processing means that customers no longer

expect just a keyword$-$based search. They want the system to understand plain English and be

able to search the tickets and help them appropriately.

$$ The greatest number of enhancement requests concerns ticketing functionality.

Assumptions

$$ The application is doing well, as the number of customers has expanded, and the application is

still serving.

$$ The application has scaled well horizontally to support the increase in users. That is$,$ they are able

to keep in place many instances of the application with active database machines with proper

load balancing. The point to note is that the entire application is scaled, not just the specific

application$/$service that needs to be scaled.

Planned Changes

Your team has been given the task to modify the helpdesk application so that it can meet the new needs

and can scale and perform to support $3$ million users. Also, the application should be easy to evolve as

the technology changes.

Given what you have learned about monoliths and microservices, it sounds like microservices may be a

great solution. The new needs are applicable to only a few components of the application, which further

makes the case for microservices.

In this case study exercise, your task is to examine the best practices $($microservices criteria$)$ which apply

in this scenario and recommend the services you think should be converted to microservices. Use the

$$Microservices Criteria$$ document in Lesson $1\mathrm{.}2$ to help justify your recommendation

For an additional $5$ points, redraw and label the architecture diagram to illustrate your modified

application. For the full $5$ points, use the tools in MS Word or some other application $($like Visio$)$ to create

your diagram. Hand$-$drawn diagrams will receive only $2$ points.