Um estudo de caso do tratamento de exceção no domínio de sistemas web corporativos

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 this 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 of exception handling in the system’s institution. Next, we analyse the evolution of exception handling anti-patterns across 15 releases of the target system. The research also involved a semi-structured interview with with three experienced professionals, representatives of the development team, to present partial results of the case and raise possible causes for the problems found. After a second analysis of the code for searching pieces of evidence concerning the turnover, the case was presented in a final report to those responsible for the system. Our findings suggest that the absence of an explicit exception handling policy impacts negatively in the developers’ perception and implementation of exception handling. Furthermore, the absence of such policy has been leading developers to replicate anti-patterns already existing in the system and spread them through new features added during system evolution. The interviewed professionals point the high team turnover as the source of this phenomenon, once the public tender process for hiring new developers has mostly attracted novices ones. A second code analysis shows some pieces of evidence of this phenomenon in the system code. Our finds beneficiated the system’s institution by making it aware of these problems and enabling it to take actions towards to combat them.