Foreign Key Constraints to Maintain Referential Integrity in Distributed Database in Microservices Architecture

Abstract

In the world of modern software development, microservices architecture has become increasingly popular due to its ability to help developers to build large and complex applications that are more agile, faster and more scalable. In large scale applications (such as e-commerce, healthcare, finance, social media, inventory management, travel booking, content management, and customer relationship management systems etc.) with many interconnected services, it is tough to keep the data accurate and consistent. The concept of referential integrity is applied to validate the data. Referential integrity refers to the preservation of relationships between tables. In a monolithic architecture, where the application and database are closely linked and co-located on the same server, referential integrity via foreign key constraints makes it feasible to preserve consistent and accurate data. But in the microservices architecture, maintaining referential integrity across distributed databases poses significant challenges due to its decentralized nature of data management. This study utilizes a hybrid research methodology, combining empirical research and design science research to discover and address the challenges of maintaining referential integrity in distributed databases in microservice architecture and calculate the response time by comparing and analyzing with existing models. The results of the evolution in term of response time are presented in this work.