TY - GEN
T1 - API document quality for resolving deprecated APIs
AU - Ko, Deokyoon
AU - Ma, Kyeongwook
AU - Park, Sooyong
AU - Kim, Suntae
AU - Kim, Dongsun
AU - Traon, Yves Le
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 IEEE.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - Using deprecated APIs often results in security vulnerability or performance degradation. Thus, invocations to deprecated APIs should be immediately replaced by alternative APIs. To resolve deprecated APIs, most developers rely on API documents provided by service API libraries. However, the documents often do not have sufficient information. This makes many deprecated API usages remain unresolved, which leads programs to vulnerable states. This paper reports a result of studying document quality for deprecated APIs. We first collected 260 deprecated APIs of eight Java libraries as well as the corresponding API documents. These documents were manually investigated to figure out whether it provides alternative APIs, rationales, or examples. Then, we examined 2,126 API usages in 249 client applications and figured out whether those were resolved in the subsequent versions. This study revealed that 1) 3.6 APIs was deprecated and 3.6 deprecated APIs are removed from the library a month on average, 2) only 61% of API documents provided alternative APIs while rationale and examples were rarely documented, and 3) 62% of deprecate API usages in client applications were resolved if the corresponding API documents provided alternative APIs while 49% were resolved when the documents provided no alternative APIs. Based on these results, we draw future directions to encourage resolving deprecated APIs.
AB - Using deprecated APIs often results in security vulnerability or performance degradation. Thus, invocations to deprecated APIs should be immediately replaced by alternative APIs. To resolve deprecated APIs, most developers rely on API documents provided by service API libraries. However, the documents often do not have sufficient information. This makes many deprecated API usages remain unresolved, which leads programs to vulnerable states. This paper reports a result of studying document quality for deprecated APIs. We first collected 260 deprecated APIs of eight Java libraries as well as the corresponding API documents. These documents were manually investigated to figure out whether it provides alternative APIs, rationales, or examples. Then, we examined 2,126 API usages in 249 client applications and figured out whether those were resolved in the subsequent versions. This study revealed that 1) 3.6 APIs was deprecated and 3.6 deprecated APIs are removed from the library a month on average, 2) only 61% of API documents provided alternative APIs while rationale and examples were rarely documented, and 3) 62% of deprecate API usages in client applications were resolved if the corresponding API documents provided alternative APIs while 49% were resolved when the documents provided no alternative APIs. Based on these results, we draw future directions to encourage resolving deprecated APIs.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/84951739587
U2 - 10.1109/APSEC.2014.87
DO - 10.1109/APSEC.2014.87
M3 - Conference paper
AN - SCOPUS:84951739587
T3 - Proceedings - Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, APSEC
SP - 27
EP - 30
BT - Proceedings - 21st Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, APSEC 2014
A2 - Cha, Sungdeok
A2 - Kwon, Gihwon
A2 - Gueheneuc, Yann-Gael
PB - IEEE Computer Society
T2 - 21st Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference, APSEC 2014
Y2 - 1 December 2014 through 4 December 2014
ER -