On the Interaction of Relational Database Access Technologies in Open Source Java Projects

TL;DR

This empirical study investigates how relational database access technologies evolve and coexist in open source Java projects, revealing that new technologies tend to complement rather than replace existing ones.

Contribution

It provides detailed insights into the co-evolution and interaction patterns of database access technologies in open source Java projects over time.

Findings

Object-relational mapping technologies complement existing technologies.

Multiple database access technologies often co-occur within projects.

Introduction of new technologies does not typically replace but adds to existing ones.

Abstract

This article presents an empirical study of how the use of relational database access technologies in open source Java projects evolves over time. Our observations may be useful to project managers to make more informed decisions on which technologies to introduce into an existing project and when. We selected 2,457 Java projects on GitHub using the low-level JDBC technology and higher-level object relational mappings such as Hibernate XML configuration files and JPA annotations. At a coarse-grained level, we analysed the probability of introducing such technologies over time, as well as the likelihood that multiple technologies co-occur within the same project. At a fine-grained level, we analysed to which extent these different technologies are used within the same set of project files. We also explored how the introduction of a new database technology in a Java project impacts the use of existing ones. We observed that, contrary to what could have been expected, object-relational mapping technologies do not tend to replace existing ones but rather complement them.