On Code Analysis Opportunities and Challenges for Enterprise Systems and Microservices

Tomas Cerny,Miroslav Bures,Dongwan Shin,Dipta Das,Jan Svacina,Vincent Bushong,Pavel Tisnovsky,Karel Frajtak,Jun Huang

doi:10.1109/access.2020.3019985

Abstract

Code analysis brings excellent benefits to software development, maintenance, and quality assurance. Various tools can uncover code defects or even software bugs in a range of seconds. For many projects and developers, the code analysis tools became essential in their daily routines. However, how can code analysis help in an enterprise environment? Enterprise software solutions grow in scale and complexity. These solutions no longer involve only plain objects and basic language constructs but operate with various components and mechanisms simplifying the development of such systems. Enterprise software vendors have adopted various development and design standards; however, there is a gap between what constructs the enterprise frameworks use and what current code analysis tools recognize. This manuscript aims to challenge the mainstream research directions of code analysis and motivate for a transition towards code analysis of enterprise systems with interesting problems and opportunities. In particular, this manuscript addresses selected enterprise problems apparent for monolithic and distributed enterprise solutions. It also considers challenges related to the recent architectural push towards a microservice architecture. Along with open-source proof-of-concept prototypes to some of the challenges, this manuscript elaborates on code analysis directions and their categorization. Furthermore, it suggests one possible perspective of the problem area using aspect-oriented programming.

Highlights

Code analysis has an extensive history and scope of research [1]
The second approach does not require access to source code and utilizes libraries for reverse engineering or bytecode code manipulation; we briefly introduce the code analysis strategies
When we look for a location in the code where we perform a remote procedure call, send a message to the message queue, or connect to a data source, we can only base on the source and bytecode analysis

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Code analysis has an extensive history and scope of research [1]. It can be recognized for benefits, including automation in areas such as code clone detection, error detection, malpractice detection, formal verification, security evaluation, quality assurance, reverse engineering, etc. T. Cerny et al.: On Code Analysis Opportunities and Challenges for Enterprise Systems and Microservices apply ‘‘code analysis’’ instruments into enterprise software, we receive reports with too low-level information. Cerny et al.: On Code Analysis Opportunities and Challenges for Enterprise Systems and Microservices apply ‘‘code analysis’’ instruments into enterprise software, we receive reports with too low-level information This is because current instruments do not aim to understand common development standards and the direction of enterprise software design. This manuscript aims to provide a road map to selected motivating challenges in enterprise software, which could be well addressed by code analysis that recognizes enterprise constructs, components, and standards. The further possible directions implied from this work are to be described in the concluding section

WHAT IS AN ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE

CATEGORIZATION FOR ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES

CODE ANALYSIS IN DISTRIBUTED ENTERPRISES

Findings

CONCLUSION