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FIXME: synchronize with database! An empirical study of data access self-admitted technical debt

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Abstract

Developers sometimes choose design and implementation shortcuts due to the pressure from tight release schedules. However, shortcuts introduce technical debt that increases as the software evolves. The debt needs to be repaid as fast as possible to minimize its impact on software development and software quality. Sometimes, technical debt is admitted by developers in comments and commit messages. Such debt is known as self-admitted technical debt (SATD). In data-intensive systems, where data manipulation is a critical functionality, the presence of SATD in the data access logic could seriously harm performance and maintainability. Understanding the composition and distribution of the SATDs across software systems and their evolution could provide insights into managing technical debt efficiently. We present a large-scale empirical study on the prevalence, composition, and evolution of SATD in data-intensive systems. We analyzed 83 open-source systems relying on relational databases as well as 19 systems relying on NoSQL databases. We detected SATD in source code comments obtained from different snapshots of the subject systems. To understand the evolution dynamics of SATDs, we conducted a survival analysis. Next, we performed a manual analysis of 361 sample data-access SATDs, investigating the composition of data-access SATDs and the reasons behind their introduction and removal. We identified 15 new SATD categories, out of which 11 are specific to database access operations. We found that most of the data-access SATDs are introduced in the later stages of change history rather than at the beginning. We also observed that bug fixing and refactoring are the main reasons behind the introduction of data-access SATDs.

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Notes

  1. https://bit.ly/2YLrLnU

  2. https://bit.ly/3jj5JAH

  3. http://www.jnosql.org/docs/introduction.html

  4. https://www.srcml.org/

  5. https://bit.ly/3siSWzX

  6. https://github.com/bbossgroups/bboss

  7. https://github.com/Blazebit/blaze-persistence

  8. https://github.com/SmartDataAnalytics/jena-sparql-api

  9. https://github.com/denimgroup/threadfix

  10. https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-Android

  11. https://github.com/ControlSystemStudio/cs-studio

  12. Blaze-Persistence, https://bit.ly/3qGaXbb

  13. OpenL Tablets, https://bit.ly/3sioFkX

  14. Snowstorm, https://bit.ly/3dEUMXN

  15. Sqlg, https://bit.ly/3wxbAqW

  16. GnuCash Android, https://bit.ly/37H1PeV

  17. Sqlg, https://bit.ly/3pRCOnK

  18. Foxtrot, https://bit.ly/3urWcey

  19. UPortal, https://bit.ly/3qY50X2

  20. Sqlg, https://bit.ly/3aIqEcc

  21. Robolectric, https://bit.ly/3umvXpD

  22. Carbon-apimgt, https://bit.ly/2NvDZvQ

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Funding

This workss is partly funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec (FRQ), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (F.R.S.-FNRS) project “INSTINCT” (190113), and the F.R.S.-FNRS and FWO EOS project SECO-ASSIST (30446992).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Polytechnique Montréal, Montreal, Canada

    Biruk Asmare Muse, Foutse Khomh & Giuliano Antoniol

  2. Software Institute, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland

    Csaba Nagy

  3. Namur Digital Institute, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

    Anthony Cleve

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  1. Biruk Asmare Muse
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  2. Csaba Nagy
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  3. Anthony Cleve
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  4. Foutse Khomh
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Correspondence to Biruk Asmare Muse.

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Communicated by: Nachiappan Nagappan

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Muse, B.A., Nagy, C., Cleve, A. et al. FIXME: synchronize with database! An empirical study of data access self-admitted technical debt. Empir Software Eng 27, 130 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-022-10119-4

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