Effort Estimation for Architectural Refactoring of Data Tier Software

Architectural refactoring requires substantial effort. We introduce an approach and a tool to predict this effort prior to refactoring. We focus on PL/SQL programs that are developed as data access tiers of business software. There are two types of common refactoring needs for these programs. First, some of the modules might need to be migrated to a separate database. Second, some of the modules in the data tier might need to be migrated to the application tier. In both cases, the refactoring effort is proportional to the amount of coupling between the migrated modules and the rest of the modules in the database. Our tool can parse PL/SQL programs to reveal this coupling based on an analysis of SQL queries. Unlike prior studies, our tool can analyze queries that are created dynamically and that use multiple tables as well as PL/SQL-specific features. We evaluate our approach with an industrial PL/SQL program from the telecommunications domain. Our results are approved to be accurate by domain experts.