kth.sePublications
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
API beauty is in the eye of the clients: 2.2 million Maven dependencies reveal the spectrum of client-API usages
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Computer Science, Software and Computer systems, SCS.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-2491-2771
Univ Rennes, CNRS, INRIA, IRISA, Rennes, France..
KTH, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Computer Science, Software and Computer systems, SCS.ORCID iD: 0000-0003-0541-6411
Univ Grenoble Alpes, INSERM, CHU Grenoble Alpes, HP2, Grenoble, France..
Show others and affiliations
2022 (English)In: Journal of Systems and Software, ISSN 0164-1212, E-ISSN 1873-1228, Vol. 184, p. 111134-, article id 111134Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

Hyrum's law states a common observation in the software industry: "With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody". Meanwhile, recent research results seem to contradict this observation when they state that "for most APIs, there is a small number of features that are actually used". In this work, we perform a large scale empirical study of client-API relationships in the Maven ecosystem, in order to investigate this seeming paradox between the observations in industry and the research literature. We study the 94 most popular libraries in Maven Central, as well as the 829,410 client artifacts that declare a dependency to these libraries and that are available in Maven Central, summing up to 2.2M dependencies. Our analysis indicates the existence of a wide spectrum of API usages, with enough clients, most API types end up being used at least once. Our second key observation is that, for all libraries, there is a small set of API types that are used by the vast majority of its clients. The practical consequences of this study are two-fold: (i) it is possible for API maintainers to find an essential part of their API on which they can focus their efforts; (ii) API developers should limit the public API elements to the set of features for which they are ready to have users. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Elsevier BV , 2022. Vol. 184, p. 111134-, article id 111134
Keywords [en]
Mining software repositories, Bytecode analysis, Software reuse, Java, Maven Central Repository
National Category
Computer Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-305550DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2021.111134ISI: 000722219800008Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85119384404OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-305550DiVA, id: diva2:1617399
Note

QC 20211206

Available from: 2021-12-06 Created: 2021-12-06 Last updated: 2022-12-06Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Software Diversity for Third-Party Dependencies
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Software Diversity for Third-Party Dependencies
2022 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Thanks to the emergence of package managers and online software repositories, modern software development heavily relies on the reuse of third-party libraries. This practice has significant benefits in terms of productivity and reliability. Yet, the reuse of software libraries leads large groups of applications to share a significant amount of code, including potential defects such as bugs or vulnerabilities. The lack of diversity in these group of applications make them more prone to large-scale failures, and more predictable for attackers attempting to exploit their shared vulnerabilities.To mitigate these risks opened by library reuse, this dissertation proposes to introduce diversity in software applications.We create variants of software applications through transformations targeting the libraries they depend on. These variants provide functionalities equivalent to their original, while not sharing the exact same behavior.

In this dissertation, we cover three aspects of software diversity.First, we study the existing behavioral diversity of alternative libraries implementing similar functionalities.We perform two case studies on two families of reusable software artifacts: JSON libraries and Bytecode decompilers. We provide empirical evidence that both groups of artifacts exhibit significant natural input/output behavioral diversity.

Second, we study software transformations targeting libraries themselves. We propose six source-to-source transformations targeting software libraries, as well as a general architecture to implement library substitution. We implement this architecture in a JSON library substitution framework, leveraging the diversity of behavior we observe in JSON libraries. We assess the impact of these transformations on open-source libraries and software applications through two experiments.

Finally, we study the properties of software applications and libraries that make them prone to transformation without changing their functionalities. We analyze the variants produced during our software diversification experiments and discuss our findings. In particular, we observe that the existence of alternative implementations at different granularity, instructions, methods, classes, and libraries, provides an important source of potential diversity that can be leveraged.

Abstract [sv]

Tack vare uppkomsten av pakethanterare och mjukvaruförråd på nätet ärmodern programvaruutveckling i hög grad beroende av återanvändning avbibliotek från tredje part. Denna praxis har betydande fördelar när det gällerproduktivitet och tillförlitlighet. Återanvändning av programvarubibliotek iett stort antal program leder dock till att dessa program delar en betydandemängd kod, inklusive potentiella fel som buggar och sårbarheter. Omprogramvarudefekter delas i stor utsträckning uppstår en risk för storskaligafel. Dessutom ökar risken för att samma sårbarhet kan användas mot fleraprogram med samma tredje-partsbibliotek. För att minska riskerna medåteranvändning av bibliotek föreslås i denna avhandling att man skaparvarianter av programvaror genom omvandlingar som är inriktade på debibliotek programvarorna är beroende av.I denna avhandling täcker vi tre aspekter av mjukvarumångfald. Förststuderar vi den befintliga beteendemässiga mångfalden hos alternativabibliotek som implementerar likvärdig funktionalitet. Vi genomför tvåfallstudier av två familjer av återanvändbar mjukvara: JSON-bibliotek ochBytecode-dekompilatorer. Vi ger empiriska bevis för att båda grupperna avmjukvara uppvisar en betydande beteendemässig mångfald när det gällerinput/output.Den andra aspekten som vi studerar är programvaruomvandlingarinriktade på själva biblioteken. Vi föreslår sex omvandlingar från källkodtill källkod inriktade på mjukvarubibliotek, samt en generell arkitektur föratt genomföra ersättningar av hela bibliotek. Vi tillämpar denna arkitekturi ett ramverk för att ersätta JSON-bibliotek och utnyttjar den mångfaldav beteenden som vi observerar i dessa. Vi bedömer effekterna av dessaomvandlingar på bibliotek och program med öppen källkod genom tvåexperiment.Slutligen studerar vi de egenskaper hos programvara och bibliotek somgör att de lämpar sig för omvandling utan att deras funktionalitet ändras.Vi analyserar de varianter som produceras under våra mjukvarudiversifieringsexperiment och diskuterar våra resultat. Vi konstaterar särskilt att förekomsten av alternativa implementeringar i olika skala, instruktioner, metoder,klasser och bibliotek, utgör en viktig källa till potentiell mångfald som kanutnyttjas.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Stockholm,Sweden: KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 2022. p. 100
Series
TRITA-EECS-AVL ; 2022:22
Keywords
Automated Software Engineering, Software Diversity, Software libraries, Software Monoculture
National Category
Computer Systems
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-310824 (URN)978-91-8040-184-5 (ISBN)
Public defence
2022-05-05, D2, Lindstedtsvägen 9, Stockholm, 13:30 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Funder
Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
Note

QCR 20220413

Available from: 2022-04-13 Created: 2022-04-07 Last updated: 2022-06-25Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full textScopus

Authority records

Harrand, NicolasSoto Valero, CésarBaudry, Benoit

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Harrand, NicolasSoto Valero, CésarBaudry, Benoit
By organisation
Software and Computer systems, SCS
In the same journal
Journal of Systems and Software
Computer Sciences

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 756 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf