Detecting and Reporting Object-Relational Mapping Problems: An Industrial Report

Abstract

Background: Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks are regarded as key tools in the software engineer arsenal. However, developers often face ORM problems, and the solution to these problems are not always clear. To mitigate these problems, we created a framework that detects and reports a family of ORM problems. Aims: The aim of this work is to assess how practitioners perceive our framework, the problems, they face, and the eventual points for improvements. Method: We first report an observational study in which we curated 12 ORMrelated problems, which are implemented in our framework. We then conducted a developer experience (DX) study with 13 developers (10 well-experienced and 3 students) to assess their experience with our framework to implement six ORMrelated tasks. Results: All participants agreed that our framework helped them to finish the programming tasks. The participants perceived that our framework eases the ORM modeling, has precise error messages, and employs ORM best practices. As a shortcoming, however, one participant mentioned that some custom annotations are not very intuitive. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that developers are willing to use frameworks that catch ORM problems, which create opportunities for new research and tools. II. BACKGROUND Java Annotations. Annotations are one of the most used Java programming language construct [3]. Introduced in version 5, annotations enable metadata inclusion directly into the source code. This characteristic permits maintaining the source code and metadata together, improving application maintenance. Annotations can be seen as a "stamp" that can, e.g., help compilers to detect other classes of errors. Several Java frameworks take advantage of annotations. Particularly relevant to this study is the JPA framework. Java Persistence API (JPA). Released in 2009, JPA is the specification for object-relational mapping with Java. ORM

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