research-article

Analysing the Evolution of Exception Handling Anti-Patterns in Large-Scale Projects: A Case Study

Authors:

Dêmora Bruna Cunha de Sousa,

Paulo Henrique Maia,

Lincoln Souza Rocha,

Windson VianaAuthors Info & Claims

SBCARS '18: Proceedings of the VII Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse

Pages 73 - 82

https://doi.org/10.1145/3267183.3267191

Published: 17 September 2018 Publication History

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that exception handling bad practices may impact the overall software quality. We believe that quality of exception handling code is directly affected by (i) an absence, or lack of awareness, of an explicit exception handling policy; and (ii) a silent rising and spreading of exception handling anti-patterns. To investigate such phenomenon, we conducted a case study in a large-scale Java Web system, trying to better understand the relationship between (i) and (ii). The study takes into account technical and human aspects. We surveyed 21 developers regarding their perception about exception handling in the system's institution. Next, we analyse the evolution of exception handling anti-patterns across 15 releases of the target system. Finally, we conduct a semi-structured interview with three senior software architects. Our finds beneficiated the system's institution by making it aware of these problems and enabling it to take actions towards to combat them.

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Cited By

Zhang HLuo JHu MYan JZhang JQiu Z(2023)Detecting Exception Handling Bugs in C++ Programs2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00098(1084-1095)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00098
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
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
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Analysing the Evolution of Exception Handling Anti-Patterns in Large-Scale Projects: A Case Study
1. General and reference
  1. Cross-computing tools and techniques
    1. Empirical studies
    2. Experimentation
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software post-development issues
      1. Documentation
      2. Software evolution
    2. Software verification and validation
      1. Empirical software validation
      2. Software defect analysis
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties
      1. Software fault tolerance
      2. Software reliability

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SBCARS '18: Proceedings of the VII Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse

September 2018

123 pages

ISBN:9781450365543

DOI:10.1145/3267183

Program Chair:
Ingrid Nunes
Prosoft Research Group, Instituto de Informática, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

Copyright © 2018 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]

In-Cooperation

SBC: Brazilian Computer Society
UFSCar: Federal University of São Carlos
IFSP: Federal Institute of São Paulo

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 September 2018

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Conference

SBCARS '18

SBCARS '18: XII Brazilian Symposium on Software Components, Architectures, and Reuse

September 17 - 21, 2018

Sao Carlos, Brazil

Acceptance Rates

SBCARS '18 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 40 submissions, 28%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 23 of 79 submissions, 29%

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Cited By

Zhang HLuo JHu MYan JZhang JQiu Z(2023)Detecting Exception Handling Bugs in C++ Programs2023 IEEE/ACM 45th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00098(1084-1095)Online publication date: May-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE48619.2023.00098
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
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
Elkhail ACerny T(2019)On Relating Code Smells to Security Vulnerabilities2019 IEEE 5th Intl Conference on Big Data Security on Cloud (BigDataSecurity), IEEE Intl Conference on High Performance and Smart Computing, (HPSC) and IEEE Intl Conference on Intelligent Data and Security (IDS)10.1109/BigDataSecurity-HPSC-IDS.2019.00013(7-12)Online publication date: May-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/BigDataSecurity-HPSC-IDS.2019.00013

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