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DiLauro_2022_river-journal
Journal article

A large-scale empirical assessment of web API size evolution

  • Di Lauro, Fabio ORCID Istituto del software (SI), Facoltà di scienze informatiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • Serbout, Souhaila ORCID Istituto del software (SI), Facoltà di scienze informatiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • Pautasso, Cesare ORCID Istituto del software (SI), Facoltà di scienze informatiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • 2022
Published in:
  • Journal of web engineering. - 2022, vol. 21, no. 6, p. 1937–1980
Web API
API evolution
Software evolution
OpenAPI
English Like any other type of software, also Web Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) evolve over time. In the case of widely used API, introducing changes is never a trivial task, because of the risk of breaking thousands of clients relying on the API. In this paper we conduct an empirical study over a large collection of OpenAPI descriptions obtained by mining open source repositories. We measure the speed at which Web APIs change and how changes affect their size, simply defined as the number of operations. The dataset of API descriptions was collected over a period of one year and includes APIs with histories spanning across up to 7 years of commits. The main finding is that APIs tend to grow, although some do reduce their size, as shown in the case study examples included in the appendix.
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Language
  • English
Classification
Computer science and technology
License
Rights reserved
Open access status
green
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Persistent URL
https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1325696
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