Automated Refactoring in Software Automation Platforms

• Autor(a) principal: Fernandes, Inês Pina
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/151810
• topic: Automated Refactoring; Anti-Pattern; Duplicated Code; Technical Debt; OutSystems; Domínio/Área Científica::Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Eletrotécnica, Eletrónica e Informática

Software Automation Platforms (SAPs) enable faster development and reduce the need to use code to construct applications. SAPs provide abstraction and automation, result- ing in a low-entry barrier for users with less programming skills to become proficient developers. An unfortunate consequence of using SAPs is the production of code with a higher technical debt since such developers are less familiar with the software develop- ment best practices. Hence, SAPs should aim to produce a simpler software construction and evolution pipeline beyond providing a rapid software development environment. One simple example of such high technical debt is the Unlimited Records anti-pattern, which occurs whenever queries are unbounded, i.e. the maximum number of records to be fetched is not explicitly limited. Limiting the number of records retrieved may, in many cases, improve the performance of applications by reducing screen-loading time, thus making applications faster and more responsive, which is a top priority for developers. A second example is the Duplicated Code anti-pattern that severely affects code readability and maintainability, and can even be the cause of bug propagation. To overcome this problem we will resort to automated refactoring as it accelerates the refactoring process and provides provably correct modifications. This dissertation aims to study and develop a solution for automated refactorings in the context of OutSystems (an industry-leading SAP). This was carried out by implement- ing automated techniques for automatically refactoring a set of selected anti-patterns in OutSystems logic that are currently detected by the OutSystems technical debt monitor- ing tool.