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The Evolution of Design Pattern Grime: An Industrial Case Study

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10611))

Abstract

Context: GoF design patterns are popular among both researchers and practitioners, in the sense that software can be largely comprised of pattern instances. However, there are concerns regarding the efficacy with which software engineers maintain pattern instances, which tend to decay over the software lifetime if no special emphasis is placed on them. Pattern grime (i.e., degradation of the instance due to buildup of unrelated artifacts) has been pointed out as one recurrent reason for the decay of GoF pattern instances. Goal: Seeking to explore this issue, we investigate the existence of relations between the accumulation of grime in pattern instances and various related factors: (a) projects, (b) pattern types, (c) developers, and (d) the structural characteristics of the pattern participating classes. Method: For that, we empirically assessed these relations through an industrial exploratory case study involving five projects (approx. 260,000 lines of code). Results: Our findings suggest a linear accumulation of pattern grime, which may depend on pattern type and developer. Moreover, we present and discuss a series of correlations between the accumulation of pattern grime and structural characteristics. Conclusions: The outcome of our study can benefit both researchers and practitioners, as it points to interesting future work opportunities and also implications relevant to the refinement of best practices, the raise awareness among developers, and the monitoring of pattern grime accumulation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/search-rug/ssap.

  2. 2.

    https://github.com/search-rug/spoon-pttgrime.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the financial support from the Brazilian and Dutch agencies CAPES/Nuffic (Grant No.: 034/12), CNPq (Grant No.: 204607/2013-2), as well as INCT-SEC (Grant No.: 573963/2008-8 and 2008/57870-9).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Daniel Feitosa, Paris Avgeriou & Apostolos Ampatzoglou

  2. Department of Computer Systems, University of São Paulo, São Carlos, Brazil

    Elisa Yumi Nakagawa

Authors
  1. Daniel Feitosa
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  2. Paris Avgeriou
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  3. Apostolos Ampatzoglou
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  4. Elisa Yumi Nakagawa
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Feitosa .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Michael Felderer

  2. Technical University Munich, Garching, Germany

    Daniel Méndez Fernández

  3. Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom

    Burak Turhan

  4. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Marcos Kalinowski

  5. University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Federica Sarro

  6. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Dietmar Winkler

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Feitosa, D., Avgeriou, P., Ampatzoglou, A., Nakagawa, E.Y. (2017). The Evolution of Design Pattern Grime: An Industrial Case Study. In: Felderer, M., Méndez Fernández, D., Turhan, B., Kalinowski, M., Sarro, F., Winkler, D. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10611. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69925-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69926-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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