Empirical Evidence of Large-Scale Diversity in API Usage of Object-Oriented Software

by Diego Mendez, Benoit Baudry and Martin Monperrus

Abstract: In this paper, we study how object-oriented classes are used across thousands of software packages. We concentrate on usage diversity, defined as the different statically observable combinations of methods called on the same object. We present empirical evidence that there is a significant usage diversity for many classes. For instance, we observe in our dataset that Java's String is used in 2460 manners. We discuss the reasons of this observed diversity and the consequences on software engineering knowledge and research.

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Diego Mendez, Benoit Baudry and Martin Monperrus, "Empirical Evidence of Large-Scale Diversity in API Usage of Object-Oriented Software", In International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM'), Netherlands, 2013.
https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM.2013.6648183

Empirical Evidence of Large-Scale Diversity in API Usage of Object-Oriented Software
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.4062

[Empirical Evidence of Large-Scale Diversity in API Usage of Object-Oriented Software](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.4062) ([doi:10.1109/SCAM.2013.6648183](https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM.2013.6648183))

\href{http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.4062}{Empirical Evidence of Large-Scale Diversity in API Usage of Object-Oriented Software} % \cite{1307.4062}

Bibtex Entry:

@inproceedings{1307.4062,
 title = {Empirical Evidence of Large-Scale Diversity in API Usage of Object-Oriented Software},
 booktitle = {International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation
  (SCAM'), Netherlands},
 year = {2013},
 doi = {10.1109/SCAM.2013.6648183},
 author = {Diego Mendez and Benoit Baudry and Martin Monperrus},
 url = {http://arxiv.org/pdf/1307.4062},
}