I’ve recently been involved in helping CAST Research Labs analyze a large sample of Java EE applications (496 apps), looking to understand the impact of different frameworks on application structural quality. We analyzed these applications using CAST’s Application Intelligence Platform (AIP) to identify critical violations of architectural and coding practices. While looking at the critical violations that were detected by CAST, something struck me: The success ratio (i.e. the ratio between the number of times a rule is violated and the number of opportunities this rule could have been violated) for rules associated to Hibernate was particularly low, indicating issues related to performance and robustness for applications using this framework. … Read More
Category Archives: Software Demystified
There is code duplication detection and code duplication detection
Many software solutions feature the detection of duplicated source code. Indeed, this is one cornerstone of software analysis and measurement: It is easy to understand the value of dealing with duplicated code: avoiding the propagation of bugs and evolutions in all copies of the faulty piece of code, promoting reuse, and avoiding an unnecessarily large code base (especially when maintenance outsourcing is billed by the line of code). Now that everyone is convinced of the importance of such capabilities, lets dive deeper into how to do it. There are various solutions and not all are equal. Can the difference be explained without looking at an algorithm or cryptic formulas? Let’s … Read More
How to: tackle database performance issues
IT companies spend millions of dollars trying to recover losses incurred due to poor application performance. I am sure each one of us has complained about a machine or application being slow or even dead, and then spent time at the coffee machine waiting for the results of a long running query. How can we fix that? Most of the business applications or systems are designed to retrieve and/or write information to a local hard disk or a database system. Consider a typical multi-tier architecture. It will contain the client tier, web tier, application tier, and data tier as shown below. The data tier represents the database and mainly acts … Read More
Do software frameworks simplify your life?
We’re covering Java frameworks and their impact on application quality in an upcoming webinar, Java Applications and Coffee: The Variations are Endless, on Jan 29. As part of that, I wanted to share some insights along the lines of what we might discuss during the webinar. But first, what is a software framework? A software framework is an abstraction in which software provides generic functionality. It is universal and can be reused by different applications. Nowadays, it seems impossible to start the development of an application without thinking about frameworks. Some of them appear as a de-facto standards used in most applications, such as log4j with its implementation in other … Read More
Reduce Software Risk through Improved Quality Measures with CAST, TCS and OMG
Webinar Summary I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion with Bill Martorelli, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Inc; Dr. Richard Mark Soley, Chairman and CEO of Object Management Group (OMG); Siva Ganesan, VP & Global Head of Assurance Services at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS); and Lev Lesokhin, EVP, Strategy & Market Development at CAST. We focused on industry trends, and specifically discussed how standardizing quality measures can have a big impact on reducing software risk. This interactive format allowed attendees to hear four distinct perspectives on the challenges and progress that is being made within organizations directly, and also at systems integrators. Mr. Martorelli started the discussion by … Read More
Estimating the Hidden Costs of Cost Estimation
A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that most federal agencies, with the exception of the Department of Defense, are not properly equipped to give accurate cost estimations of their IT infrastructure. There are many reasons for this, but the problem starts with the data that is being fed into most cost estimation practices and models. For any organization, federal or commercial, the ability to credibly estimate the time and budget required for a project to reach a successful conclusion is crucial. The many benefits of good estimating have been explained over and over. According to the GAO, federal agencies are not setting a good precedent in estimating their … Read More
Protecting an Endangered Species: Design Patterns
Do you know what happens to your cherished design patterns once your application is delivered and enters the hard, wildlife of exploitation, software evolution, and maintenance? Life is a jungle for the application code and health in the ecosystem of permanent software evolution, rapid maintenance, and changing software maintenance staff. It is likely that their life expectancy turns shorter than ever as the application evolution changes hands. When you carefully crafted your design patterns, your intent was to exploit the experience of the “Gang of Four” masters and others by using proven, rock-solid arrangements of objects and their documented tradeoffs. Your goal was probably to help promote easier program changes … Read More