research-article

An Exploratory Study of Exception Handling Behavior in Evolving Android and Java Applications

Authors:

Juliana Oliveira,

Fernando CastorAuthors Info & Claims

SBES '16: Proceedings of the XXX Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering

Pages 23 - 32

https://doi.org/10.1145/2973839.2973843

Published: 19 September 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Previous work has shown that robustness-related issues like functional errors and app crashes rank among the most common causes for complaints about mobile phone apps. Since most Android applications are written in Java, exception handling is the main mechanism they employ to report and handle errors, similarly to standard Java applications. Thus, the proper use of this mechanism is closely linked to app robustness. Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, no previous study analyzed the relationship between source code changes and uncaught exceptions, a common cause of bugs in Android apps, nor whether exception handling code in these apps evolves in the same way as in standard Java applications. This paper presents an empirical study aimed at understanding the relationship between changes in Android programs and their robustness and comparing the evolution of the exception handling code in Android and standard Java applications.

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Cited By

Oliveira ACorreia JSousa LAssunção WCoutinho DGarcia AOizumi WBarbosa CUchôa APereira J(2023)Don’t Forget the Exception! : Considering Robustness Changes to Identify Design Problems2023 IEEE/ACM 20th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR)10.1109/MSR59073.2023.00064(417-429)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR59073.2023.00064
Wimalasooriya CLicorish SCosta DMacDonell S(2022)A systematic mapping study addressing the reliability of mobile applicationsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2021.111166186:COnline publication date: 9-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2021.111166
de Sousa DMaia PRocha LViana W(2020)Studying the evolution of exception handling anti-patterns in a long-lived large-scale projectJournal of the Brazilian Computer Society10.1186/s13173-019-0095-526:1Online publication date: 27-Jan-2020
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13173-019-0095-5
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An Exploratory Study of Exception Handling Behavior in Evolving Android and Java Applications
1. Software and its engineering
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cover image ACM Other conferences

SBES '16: Proceedings of the XXX Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering

September 2016

167 pages

ISBN:9781450342018

DOI:10.1145/2973839

Editor:
Eduardo Santanda de Almeida

Copyright © 2016 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 September 2016

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SBES '16

SBES '16: 30th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering

September 19 - 23, 2016

Maringá, Brazil

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Cited By

Oliveira ACorreia JSousa LAssunção WCoutinho DGarcia AOizumi WBarbosa CUchôa APereira J(2023)Don’t Forget the Exception! : Considering Robustness Changes to Identify Design Problems2023 IEEE/ACM 20th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR)10.1109/MSR59073.2023.00064(417-429)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR59073.2023.00064
Wimalasooriya CLicorish SCosta DMacDonell S(2022)A systematic mapping study addressing the reliability of mobile applicationsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2021.111166186:COnline publication date: 9-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2021.111166
de Sousa DMaia PRocha LViana W(2020)Studying the evolution of exception handling anti-patterns in a long-lived large-scale projectJournal of the Brazilian Computer Society10.1186/s13173-019-0095-526:1Online publication date: 27-Jan-2020
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13173-019-0095-5
Nguyen TVu PNguyen TDevanbu PCohen MZimmermann T(2020)Code recommendation for exception handlingProceedings of the 28th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3368089.3409690(1027-1038)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3368089.3409690
Ebert FCastor FSerebrenik A(2020)A Reflection on “An Exploratory Study on Exception Handling Bugs in Java Programs”2020 IEEE 27th International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER48275.2020.9054791(552-556)Online publication date: Feb-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER48275.2020.9054791
Bezerra VRocha LFilho JTrinta FMachado ISouza RMaciel RSant'Anna C(2019)An Empirical Study on Inter-Component Exception Notification in Android PlatformProceedings of the XXXIII Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3350768.3350784(73-83)Online publication date: 23-Sep-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3350768.3350784
Jia ZLi SYu TLiao XWang JDumas MPfahl DApel SRusso A(2019)Automatically detecting missing cleanup for ungraceful exitsProceedings of the 2019 27th ACM Joint Meeting on European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3338906.3338938(751-762)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2019
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Kechagia MDevroey XPanichella AGousios Gvan Deursen AZhang DMøller A(2019)Effective and efficient API misuse detection via exception propagation and search-based testingProceedings of the 28th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3293882.3330552(192-203)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
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Fogen KLichter H(2019)Combinatorial Robustness Testing with Negative Test Cases2019 IEEE 19th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS)10.1109/QRS.2019.00018(34-45)Online publication date: Jul-2019
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Oliveira J(2018)Taming Exceptions in Android Applications2018 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)10.1109/ISSREW.2018.000-2(174-177)Online publication date: Oct-2018
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISSREW.2018.000-2
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