Profiles of Schema Evolution in Free Open Source Software Projects

Panos Vassiliadis

Summary

In this paper, we present the findings of a large study of the evolution of the schema of 195 Free Open Source Software projects. We identify families of evolutionary behaviors, or taxa, in FOSS projects. A large percentage of the projects demonstrate very few, if any, actions of schema evolution. Two other taxa involve the evolution via focused actions, with either a single focused maintenance action, or a large percentage of evolution activity grouped in no more than a couple interventions. Schema evolution also involves moderate, and active evolution, with very different volumes of updates to the schema. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of this kind in the area of schema evolution, both in terms of presenting profiles of how schemata evolve, and, in terms of the dataset magnitude and the generalizability of the findings.

Texts

Panos Vassiliadis. Profiles of Schema Evolution in Free Open Source Software Projects. 37th IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE '21), April 19-22, 2021.

Local copy of the paper (PDF)

Presentations

Plz., refer to our Schema biographies page for a general overview of our research program.
  • A long presentation of the paper (PDF)
  • A 12' video presentation is available as a youtube video.