Open Access
A DESIGN SCIENCE APPROACH TO MITIGATING INTER-SERVICE INTEGRATION FAILURES IN MICROSERVICE ARCHITECTURES: THE CONSUMER-DRIVEN CONTRACT TESTING FRAMEWORK AND PILOT IMPLEMENTATION
4
Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
4
Faculty of Computer Science, Universitas Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
Abstract
Purpose: Microservice Architectures (MSA) enhance agility but introduce significant complexity in managing inter-service communication and mitigating integration failures, often rendering traditional End-to-End (E2E) testing impractical. This study aims to propose, implement, and evaluate a formal Consumer-Driven Contract Testing (CDCT) framework as a superior quality assurance strategy for distributed systems.
Design/Methodology/Approach: A Design Science Research (DSR) approach was employed to develop the CDCT framework artifact, which supports both REST and gRPC protocols. A pilot implementation was deployed within a Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipeline on a representative microservice topology. The framework’s efficacy was quantitatively evaluated by measuring key quality assurance metrics: Time to Feedback (TTF) on induced breaking changes, Integration Fault Isolation (IFI), and the impact on a Deployment Confidence Index (DCI), comparing results against an E2E testing baseline.
Findings: The CDCT framework demonstrated a substantial reduction in TTF, allowing developers to detect integration faults orders of magnitude faster and at an earlier stage in the development lifecycle. The IFI metric confirmed that CDCT precisely isolates breaking changes to the consumer-provider contract, significantly reducing debugging effort. The unified approach to REST and gRPC validation confirmed the framework’s technological versatility. The framework effectively facilitates independent deployment, a core tenet of MSA, by providing a high DCI.
Originality/Value: This research delivers a validated, formal CDCT framework that extends coverage to heterogeneous communication protocols (REST/gRPC) and provides quantitative empirical evidence for its superiority over conventional integration testing in an MSA context.
Keywords
Consumer-Driven Contract Testing,
Microservice Architecture,
Distributed Systems,
Quality Assurance
References
G. actions. About billing for GitHub Actions. https://docs.github.com/en/billing/managing-billing- for-github-actions/about-billing-for-github-actions, 2021. [Online; accessed 30-oct-2021].
Balalaie, A. Heydarnoori, and P. Jamshidi. Microservices architecture enables devops: Migration to a cloud-native architecture. Ieee Software, 33(3):42–52, 2016.
Berg. Component contract testing is insufficient. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/component- contract-testing-insufficient-cliff-berg/, 2020.
[Online; accessed 22-Nov-2021].
W. Boehm and P. N. Papaccio. Understanding and controlling software costs. IEEE transactions on software engineering, 14(10):1462–1477, 1988.
F. P. Brooks. The mythical man-month – Essays on Software-Engineering. Addison-Wesley, 1975.
M. Cohen. Succeeding with Agile. Addison-Wesley, 2010.
S. Daya, N. Van Duy, K. Eati, C. M. Ferreira, D. Glozic, V. Gucer, M. Gupta, S. Joshi, V. Lampkin,
M. Martins, et al. Microservices from theory to practice: creating applications in IBM Bluemix using the microservices approach. IBM Redbooks, 2016.
N. Dragoni, S. Giallorenzo, A. L. Lafuente, M. Mazzara, F. Montesi, R. Mustafin, and L. Safina. Microservices: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Present and ulterior software engineering, pages 195–216, 2017.
M. Droettboom. Understanding JSON Schema. https://json-schema.org/understanding-json- schema/reference/generic.html, 2021. [Online; accessed 27-Sep-2021].
M. Fellows. Support grpc. https://pact.canny.io/feature-requests/p/support- grpc, 2020. [Online; accessed 12-Jun-2022].
M. Fowler. Testing Strategies in a Microservice Architecture. https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservice- testing/, 2014. [Online; accessed 21-Sep-2021].
M. Fowler. Microservices Guide. https://martinfowler.com/microservices/, 2016.
[Online; accessed 11-Aug-2021].
Google. Rethinking external APIs. https://googleapis.dev/python/protobuf/latest/google
/protobuf/json_format.html, 2021. [Online; accessed 4-nov-2021].
gRPC authors. What is gRPC. https://grpc.io/docs/what-is-grpc/, 2020. [Online; accessed 11-Aug-2021].
L. Gupta. What is REST. https://restfulapi.net/, 2020. [Online; accessed 11-Aug-2021].
F. Henderson. Software engineering at google. arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.01715, 2017.
R. Hevner, S. T. March, J. Park, and S. Ram. Design science in information systems research. MIS quarterly, pages 75–105, 2004.
J. Humble and D. Farley. Continuous delivery: reliable software releases through build, test, and deployment automation. Pearson Education, 2010.
P. Jamshidi, C. Pahl, N. C. Mendonça, J. Lewis, and
S. Tilkov. Microservices: The journey so far and challenges ahead. IEEE Software, 35(3):24–35, 2018.
G. Jansen. Verify your microservice integrations with contract testing. https://developer.ibm.com/articles/verify-your- microservice-integrations-with-contract-testing/, 2021. [Online; accessed 4-Nov-2021].
J. Lehvä, N. Mäkitalo, and T. Mikkonen. Consumer- driven contract tests for microservices: A case study. In International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, pages 497–512. Springer, 2019.
S. Newman. Building microservices. " O’Reilly
Media, Inc.", 2021.
K. Ostrovsky. Rethinking external APIs. https://daily.dev/blog/api-gateway-for-grpc- microservices, 2021. [Online; accessed 31-oct- 2021].
M. Rahman and J. Gao. A reusable automated acceptance testing architecture for microservices in behavior-driven development. In 2015 IEEE Symposium on service-oriented system engineering, pages 321–325. IEEE, 2015.
C. Richardson. Microservics Patterns. Manning books, 2018.
Schaffer. Testing of Microservices. https://engineering.atspotify.com/2018/01/11/testing
-of-microservices/, 2018. [Online; accessed 11-Aug- 2021].
Sai Nikhil Donthi. (2025). A Scrumban Integrated Approach to Improve Software Development Process and Product Delivery. The American Journal of Interdisciplinary Innovations and Research, 7(09), 70–82.
S. SonarSource S.A. Metric definitions. https://medium.com/@qawerk/how-much-does-it- cost-to-outsource-qa-ad345bf9e05, 2018. [Online; accessed 18-Nov-2021].
S. SonarSource S.A. Metric definitions. https://docs.sonarqube.org/latest/user-guide/metric- definitions/, 2021. [Online; accessed 9-Nov-2021]
D. Stenberg. Http2 explained, 2014.
L. M. A. S. T. Berners-Lee W3C/MIT, R. Fielding Day Software. Uniform resource identifier (uri): Generic syntax.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3986, 2005. [Online; accessed 19-Nov-2021].
C. Tankersley. Wsl2 slowing down over time. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4498, 2019. [Online; accessed 22-Nov-2021].
E. Tom, A. Aurum, and R. Vidgen. An exploration of technical debt. Journal of Systems and Software, 86(6):1498–1516, 2013.
Sagar Kesarpu. (2025). Contract Testing with PACT: Ensuring Reliable API Interactions in Distributed Systems. The American Journal of Engineering and Technology, 7(06), 14–23. https://doi.org/10.37547/tajet/Volume07Issue06-03
J. Vihanen. Testing a Greenfield Microservice. https://www.smartly.io/blog/testing-a-greenfield- microservice, 2019. [Online; accessed 4-Nov-2021].
M. Villamizar, O. Garcés, H. Castro, M. Verano, L. Salamanca, R. Casallas, and S. Gil. Evaluating the monolithic and the microservice architecture pattern to deploy web applications in the cloud. In 2015 10th Computing Colombian Conference (10CCC), pages 583–590. IEEE, 2015.
P. Vincent. Why you should use consumer-driven contracts for microservice integration tests. https://engineering.poppulo.com/why-should-you- use-consumer-driven-contracts-for-microservices- integration-tests/, 2015. [Online; accessed 22-Nov- 2021]
Jain, R., Sai Santosh Goud Bandari, & Naga Sai Mrunal Vuppala. (2025). Polynomial Regression Techniques in Insurance Claims Forecasting. International Journal of Computational and Experimental Science and Engineering, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.22399/ijcesen.3519
Sujeet Kumar Tiwari. (2024). The Future of Digital Retirement Solutions: A Study of Sustainability and Scalability in Financial Planning Tools. Journal of Computer Science and Technology Studies, 6(5), 229-245. https://doi.org/10.32996/jcsts.2024.6.5.19
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Dr. Chinedu Okafor, Dr. Amina Ibrahim Bello, Preparing National Security Systems for the Quantum Era: A Roadmap for Post-Quantum Cryptographic Migration , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 08 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 08
- John A. Prescott, A Unified Framework for Time-Sensitive and Resilient In-Vehicle Communication: Integrating Automotive Ethernet, Wireless TSN, and IoTEnabled Vehicle Health Monitoring , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 2 No. 08 (2025): Volume 02 Issue 08
- Jianhong Wei, Aaliyah M. Farouk, MITIGATING CONFIRMATION BIAS IN DEEP LEARNING WITH NOISY LABELS THROUGH COLLABORATIVE NETWORK TRAINING , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 1 No. 01 (2024): Volume 01 Issue 01
- Dr. Jonathan Miller, Dr. Emily Carter, A Deep Learning-Based Biometric Authentication Architecture for Banking Fraud Prevention Using Google Teachable Machine and Facial Recognition Analytics , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 05 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 05
- Dr. Mingyu L. Chen, Muhammad Siddiqui, CODE-SWITCHED RELATION EXTRACTION: A NOVEL DATASET AND TRAINING METHODOLOGY , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 2 No. 02 (2025): Volume 02 Issue 02
- Mr. Swapnil Joshi, Deep Learning-Based Customer Segmentation for Targeted Marketing in E-Commerce Platforms , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 07 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 07
- Dr. Aarav Sharma, AI-Driven Hyper-Automation for Financial Workflows , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 07 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 07
- Alistair J. Finch, Integrating Jira, Jenkins, and Azure DevOps to Optimize Software Release Pipelines , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 2 No. 10 (2025): Volume 02 Issue 10
- Aarav Mehta, Kavya Sharma, Deep Belief Network-Based Intelligent Framework for Financial Fraud Detection and Real-Time Alerting in Cloud Computing , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 08 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 08
- Dr. Aarav Sharma, Ms. Priya Nair, A Hybrid Deep Learning Framework for Automated Liver Tumor Segmentation and Malignancy Prediction from CT Imaging Data , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 07 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 07
Similar Articles
- Evgenii Lvov, Quality Assurance and Scalability: The Role of High-Test Coverage in Continuous Integration and Deployment Pipelines , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 07 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 07
- Ngozi Okafor, A Consumer-Driven Contract-Based Approach to Verifying User Interface Integration in Microservices Architectures , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 2 No. 10 (2025): Volume 02 Issue 10
- Serhii Yakhin , Resilience and Scale in .NET Microservices via Message Brokers for Ensuring Fault Tolerance and Scalability in .NET Microservices , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 09 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 09
- Dr. Chinedu Okafor, Dr. Amina Ibrahim Bello, Preparing National Security Systems for the Quantum Era: A Roadmap for Post-Quantum Cryptographic Migration , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 08 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 08
- Dr. Alistair Sterling, Architectural Evolution and Decomposition Strategies: A Comprehensive Analysis of Microservice Migration, Performance Optimization, And Machine Learning-Assisted Service Boundary Detection , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 2 No. 12 (2025): Volume 02 Issue 12
- Anh N. Tran, Siew H. Lim, A Critical Analysis of Apache Kafka's Role in Advancing Microservices Architecture: Performance, Patterns, and Persistence , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 2 No. 10 (2025): Volume 02 Issue 10
- Grigorii Danileiko, Architectural and Methodological Foundations of Trusted User Interfaces for GenAI-Assisted Contract Preparation, Review, and Approval Systems , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 06 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 06
- Dr. Emiliano R. Vassalli, Event-Driven Architectures in Fintech Systems: A Comprehensive Theoretical, Methodological, and Resilience-Oriented Analysis of Kafka-Centric Microservices , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 2 No. 10 (2025): Volume 02 Issue 10
- Dr. Eleanor Whitfield, Architecting Secure and Cost-Optimized Iot-Cloud Ecosystems: Integrating AI-Driven Intrusion Detection, Multi-Path Routing, And Intelligent Workload Scheduling in Distributed Systems , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 01 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 01
- Chinedu Emmanuel Okafor, A Comprehensive Architecture for Enhancing IoT Security Through Zero Trust Principles , International Journal of Modern Computer Science and IT Innovations: Vol. 3 No. 09 (2026): Volume 03 Issue 09
1-10 of 97
Next
You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.