AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE RELATION BETWEEN STRONG CHANGE COUPLING AND DEFECTS USING HISTORY AND SOCIAL METRICS IN THE APACHE ARIES PROJECT
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This study investigated the relationship between strong change couplings and defects in the Apache Aries project. The researchers found that strong change couplings were moderately correlated with defects and the majority were associated with at least one defect. Models using historical and social metrics achieved high accuracy in identifying strong change couplings. The best metrics included discussion length, number of committers, committer experience, and number of defects and weeks between first and last commit. The models could correctly predict 45.67% of strong change couplings linked to post-release defects. The researchers concluded that strong change couplings influence code quality and aim to further investigate their impact and how to monitor and track the "damage" caused.
![2
MOTIVATION
+ Dependencies
+ Maintenance effort
[Banker et al.1998]
+ Defects
[D’ambros et al. 2009b, Cataldo et al. 2009, Kirbas et. al 2014]
+ ripple effects
[Pressman, 2001]
Software systems comprise
artifacts that depend on each other](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/osspresentationv1-150520115303-lva1-app6891/85/AN-EMPIRICAL-STUDY-OF-THE-RELATION-BETWEEN-STRONG-CHANGE-COUPLING-AND-DEFECTS-USING-HISTORY-AND-SOCIAL-METRICS-IN-THE-APACHE-ARIES-PROJECT-2-320.jpg)
![WHY IS CHANGE COUPLING IMPORTANT?
5
Correlation with
Defects
[D’ambros et al. 2009b,
Kirbas et. al 2014]
Change
Coupling
Change Impact Analysis
[Zimmermann et al. 2005, Zhou et al.
2008, Hassan 2009]
Code
Refactoring
[D’ambros et al. 2009a]
Understand
the Sotware
Architecture
[Zimmermann et al.
2003]
Modularity
Assessment
[[[Silva et al. 2014]
Trace
Requiriments
[Ali et al. 2013]
Change couplings reveal relationships not present in
the code or in the documentation.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/osspresentationv1-150520115303-lva1-app6891/85/AN-EMPIRICAL-STUDY-OF-THE-RELATION-BETWEEN-STRONG-CHANGE-COUPLING-AND-DEFECTS-USING-HISTORY-AND-SOCIAL-METRICS-IN-THE-APACHE-ARIES-PROJECT-5-320.jpg)
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE RELATION BETWEEN STRONG CHANGE COUPLING AND DEFECTS USING HISTORY AND SOCIAL METRICS IN THE APACHE ARIES PROJECT
- 1. AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE RELATION BETWEEN STRONG CHANGE COUPLING AND DEFECTS USING HISTORY AND SOCIAL METRICS IN THE APACHE ARIES PROJECT Igor Wiese Rodrigo Kuroda Reginaldo Ré Gustavo Oliva Marco Gerosa
- 2. 2 MOTIVATION + Dependencies + Maintenance effort [Banker et al.1998] + Defects [D’ambros et al. 2009b, Cataldo et al. 2009, Kirbas et. al 2014] + ripple effects [Pressman, 2001] Software systems comprise artifacts that depend on each other
- 3. 3 MOTIVATION SCENARIO Subsystem A Class a Class c Class b Subsystem B Class d Class e
- 4. CHANGE COUPLING 4 Artifacts a1 Artifacts a2 time Co-change commit A change coupling indicates that two artifacts changed together (co-changed) in the past, making them evolutionarily connected.
- 5. WHY IS CHANGE COUPLING IMPORTANT? 5 Correlation with Defects [D’ambros et al. 2009b, Kirbas et. al 2014] Change Coupling Change Impact Analysis [Zimmermann et al. 2005, Zhou et al. 2008, Hassan 2009] Code Refactoring [D’ambros et al. 2009a] Understand the Sotware Architecture [Zimmermann et al. 2003] Modularity Assessment [[[Silva et al. 2014] Trace Requiriments [Ali et al. 2013] Change couplings reveal relationships not present in the code or in the documentation.
- 6. 6 THE MAIN GOALS OF THIS PAPER ARE: 1 2 investigate the relation between strong change couplings and the number of defects (RQ1) characterize strong change couplings using historical and social metrics (RQ2) 3 predict defects associated with strong change couplings (RQ3)
- 7. 7 METHODOLOGY Data Collection Identify the strong change couplings Compute the set of Metrics Build the Classifiers RQ1: Are strong change couplings related to defects? RQ2: Can historical and social metrics identify if a change coupling is strong? RQ3: Can we predict defects associated with strong change couplings?
- 8. 8 IDENTIFYING STRONG CHANGE COUPLINGS Support Number of transactions when both artifacts were changed together (support = 3). Confidence The confidence for the change coupling from A to B would be 3/9 = 0.33. In turn, the confidence for the change coupling from B to A would be 3/4 = 0.75. Strong change coupling After ranking all change couplings by support value, we used a quartile analysis to determine the relevant change couplings. All couplings with support value higher than the third quartile were labeled as “strong”. Artifact A Artifact B time Co-change commit
- 9. 9 APACHE ARIES The Aries project delivers a set of pluggable Java components enabling an enterprise OSGi application programming model ..has had 3,901 commits made by 35 contributors representing 189,241 lines of code 397 Commits Up +77 (24%) from previous 12 months 11 Contributors Up +1 (10%) from previous 12 months We collected data from six releases, 556 issue reports, five years of software developments history
- 10. 10 RQ1: ARE STRONG CHANGE COUPLINGS RELATED TO DEFECTS? The majority of the strong change couplings could be associated with at least one defect. strong change couplings are moderately correlated (rho 0.46, p < 0.001)
- 11. 11 RQ2: CAN HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL METRICS IDENTIFY IF A CHANGE COUPLING IS STRONG? To answer this question, we conducted two studies: • Cross-validation for each release; • Using one release to train, the consecutive release to test Cross Validation Results: • Models with high Accuracy • AUC ranging 88% - 99% • F-measure from 70%-99% Inter-Release Train/Test • Models can correctly predicted strong change couplings range from 56% to 100%. • Problems when the train release have few instances
- 12. 12 RQ2: WHICH ARE THE BEST METRICS TO IDENTIFY STRONG CHANGE COUPLINGS? • In average 5 metrics were used (models were built with 16 metrics) • The best subset selected: • The length of discussion (number of words) – 4 releases • The number of distinct committers – 3 releases • The experience of committers – 2 releases • The number of defect issues associated with – 2 releases • The number of weeks between the first and last commit – 2 releases
- 13. 13 RQ3: CAN WE PREDICT DEFECTS ASSOCIATED WITH STRONG CHANGE COUPLINGS? We found 81 strong change couplings in the post-release to fix defects. We correctly predicted 37 strong change couplings (45.67%).
- 14. CONCLUSIONS • We studied the relationship between strong change couplings and defects • We developed models with high accuracy to identify strong change couplings • In some cases, it is necessary to group the data. • In average, 5 metrics were necessary to get better results • 6 metrics were selected at least in two releases. • We correctly predict 45.67% of strong change couplings changed • We want to go deeper and investigate the ways in which strong change couplings can influence code quality • Build tools to monitor and track the “damage” caused by these couplings; • Change propagation analysis using contextual information; 14