research-article

On the Relation between Complexity, Explicitness, Effectiveness of Refactorings and Non-Functional Concerns

Authors:

Vinícius Soares,

Anderson Oliveira,

Juliana Alves Pereira,

Ana Carla Bibano,

Alessandro Garcia,

Paulo Roberto Farah,

Silvia Regina Vergilio,

Marcelo Schots,

Daniel Coutinho,

Daniel Oliveira,

Anderson UchôaAuthors Info & Claims

SBES '20: Proceedings of the XXXIV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering

Pages 788 - 797

https://doi.org/10.1145/3422392.3422439

Published: 21 December 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Developers need to consistently improve the internal structural quality of a program to address its maintainability and possibly other non-functional concerns. Refactoring is the main practice to improve code quality. Typical refactoring factors, such as their complexity and explicitness (i.e., their self-affirmation), may influence its effectiveness in improving key internal code attributes, such as enhancing cohesion or reducing its coupling, complexity and size. However, we still lack an understanding of whether such concerns and factors play a role on improving the code structural quality. Thus, this paper investigates the relationship between complexity, explicitness and effectiveness of refactorings and non-functional concerns in four projects. We study four non-functional concerns, namely maintainability, security, performance, and robustness. Our findings reveal that complex refactorings indeed have an impactful effect on the code structure, either improving or reducing the code structural quality. We also found that both self-affirmed refactorings and non-functional concerns are usually accompanied by complex refactorings, but tend to have a negative effect on code structural quality. Our findings can: (i) help researchers to improve the design of empirical studies and refactoring-related tools, and (ii) warn practitioners on which circumstances their refactorings may cause a negative impact on code quality.

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Cited By

Santana AFigueiredo EAlves Pereira JGarcia A(2024)An exploratory evaluation of code smell agglomerationsSoftware Quality Journal10.1007/s11219-024-09680-6Online publication date: 11-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-024-09680-6
Barbosa CUchôa ACoutinho DAssunção WOliveira AGarcia AFonseca BRabelo MCoelho JCarvalho ESantos H(2023)Beyond the Code: Investigating the Effects of Pull Request Conversations on Design Decay2023 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1109/ESEM56168.2023.10304805(1-12)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ESEM56168.2023.10304805
Coutinho DUchoa ABarbosa CSoares VGarcia ASchots MPereira JAssuncao W(2022)On the Influential Interactive Factors on Degrees of Design Decay: A Multi-Project Study2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00093(753-764)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00093
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

On the Relation between Complexity, Explicitness, Effectiveness of Refactorings and Non-Functional Concerns
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software development techniques
    2. Software post-development issues
      1. Maintaining software
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Extra-functional properties

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cover image ACM Other conferences

SBES '20: Proceedings of the XXXIV Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering

October 2020

901 pages

ISBN:9781450387538

DOI:10.1145/3422392

General Chairs:
Everton Cavalcante
UFRN, Brazil
,
Francisco Dantas
UERN, Brazil
,
Thais Batista
UFRN, Brazil

Copyright © 2020 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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SBC: Brazilian Computer Society

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 December 2020

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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior
Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico

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SBES '20

SBES '20: 34th Brazilian Symposium on Software Engineering

October 21 - 23, 2020

Natal, Brazil

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Overall Acceptance Rate 147 of 427 submissions, 34%

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Cited By

Santana AFigueiredo EAlves Pereira JGarcia A(2024)An exploratory evaluation of code smell agglomerationsSoftware Quality Journal10.1007/s11219-024-09680-6Online publication date: 11-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-024-09680-6
Barbosa CUchôa ACoutinho DAssunção WOliveira AGarcia AFonseca BRabelo MCoelho JCarvalho ESantos H(2023)Beyond the Code: Investigating the Effects of Pull Request Conversations on Design Decay2023 ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM)10.1109/ESEM56168.2023.10304805(1-12)Online publication date: 26-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ESEM56168.2023.10304805
Coutinho DUchoa ABarbosa CSoares VGarcia ASchots MPereira JAssuncao W(2022)On the Influential Interactive Factors on Degrees of Design Decay: A Multi-Project Study2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00093(753-764)Online publication date: Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00093
AlOmar ELiu JAddo KMkaouer MNewman COuni AYu Z(2022)On the documentation of refactoring typesAutomated Software Engineering10.1007/s10515-021-00314-w29:1Online publication date: 1-May-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10515-021-00314-w
Uchoa ABarbosa CCoutinho DOizumi WAssuncao WVergilio SPereira JOliveira AGarcia A(2021)Predicting Design Impactful Changes in Modern Code Review: A Large-Scale Empirical Study2021 IEEE/ACM 18th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories (MSR)10.1109/MSR52588.2021.00059(471-482)Online publication date: May-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/MSR52588.2021.00059
Bibiano AAssuncao WCoutinho DSantos KSoares VGheyi RGarcia AFonseca BRibeiro MOliveira DBarbosa CMarques JOliveira A(2021)Look Ahead! Revealing Complete Composite Refactorings and their Smelliness Effects2021 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00033(298-308)Online publication date: Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00033

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