Studying the Characteristics of SQL-related Development Tasks: An Empirical Study

TL;DR

This empirical study analyzes SQL-related development tasks in 20 Apache projects, revealing they take longer, involve more code changes, and require more effort in reviews and documentation, highlighting unique challenges in SQL development.

Contribution

The paper provides the first empirical characterization of SQL development tasks, showing their distinct challenges and requirements compared to non-SQL tasks.

Findings

SQL tasks have longer time-to-completion.

SQL tasks require more code changes.

SQL tasks involve more effort in reviews and documentation.

Abstract

A key function of a software system is its ability to facilitate the manipulation of data, which is often implemented using a flavour of the Structured Query Language (SQL). To develop the data operations of software (i.e, creating, retrieving, updating, and deleting data), developers are required to excel in writing and combining both SQL and application code. The problem is that writing SQL code in itself is already challenging (e.g., SQL anti-patterns are commonplace) and combining SQL with application code (i.e., for SQL development tasks) is even more demanding. Meanwhile, we have little empirical understanding regarding the characteristics of SQL development tasks. Do SQL development tasks typically need more code changes? Do they typically have a longer time-to-completion? Answers to such questions would prepare the community for the potential challenges associated with such tasks. Our results obtained from 20 Apache projects reveal that SQL development tasks have a significantly longer time-to-completion than SQL-unrelated tasks and require significantly more code changes. Through our qualitative analyses, we observe that SQL development tasks require more spread out changes, effort in reviews and documentation. Our results also corroborate previous research highlighting the prevalence of SQL anti-patterns. The software engineering community should make provision for the peculiarities of SQL coding, in the delivery of safe and secure interactive software.