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Mining for sustainability in cloud architecture among the discussions of software practitioners: building a dataset

Sahar Ahmadisakha, Vasilios Andrikopoulos

TL;DR

The paper investigates sustainability in cloud architecture from practitioners by mining discussions on the Stack Exchange Software Engineering forum. It employs software repository mining (MSR) guided by ACM empirical standards and a Goal-Question-Metric framework to build an annotated dataset of cloud architectural discussions and map quality requirements to sustainability dimensions. The study finds that practitioners emphasize technical and economic sustainability, with environmental concerns being less prominent than in academic literature, and that discussions focus heavily on design activities (analysis, synthesis, implementation) rather than evaluation or maintenance. The resulting dataset provides a practitioner-centered resource for understanding current sustainability considerations in cloud architecture and enables future replication and extension across additional data sources and dimensions.

Abstract

The adoption of cloud computing is steadily increasing in designing and implementing software systems, thus it becomes imperative to consider the sustainability implications of these processes. While there has already been some academic research on this topic, there is a lack of perspective from practitioners. To bridge this gap, we utilize software repository mining techniques to examine 192 discussions among practitioners on the Software Engineering forum of the StackExchange platform, aiming to build an annotated dataset containing cloud architectural discussions and to understand the current discussion on sustainability in cloud architecture. To identify these discussions, we first put together a list of terms indicating sustainability as the topic. Our initial findings indicate practitioners mainly focus on design aspects (analysis, synthesis, and implementation) while avoiding complex activities like evaluation and maintenance. Technical sustainability is emphasized, while the economic dimension has the most discussions exclusively focused on it. This contrasts with previous academic literature, which highlighted environmental sustainability.

Mining for sustainability in cloud architecture among the discussions of software practitioners: building a dataset

TL;DR

The paper investigates sustainability in cloud architecture from practitioners by mining discussions on the Stack Exchange Software Engineering forum. It employs software repository mining (MSR) guided by ACM empirical standards and a Goal-Question-Metric framework to build an annotated dataset of cloud architectural discussions and map quality requirements to sustainability dimensions. The study finds that practitioners emphasize technical and economic sustainability, with environmental concerns being less prominent than in academic literature, and that discussions focus heavily on design activities (analysis, synthesis, implementation) rather than evaluation or maintenance. The resulting dataset provides a practitioner-centered resource for understanding current sustainability considerations in cloud architecture and enables future replication and extension across additional data sources and dimensions.

Abstract

The adoption of cloud computing is steadily increasing in designing and implementing software systems, thus it becomes imperative to consider the sustainability implications of these processes. While there has already been some academic research on this topic, there is a lack of perspective from practitioners. To bridge this gap, we utilize software repository mining techniques to examine 192 discussions among practitioners on the Software Engineering forum of the StackExchange platform, aiming to build an annotated dataset containing cloud architectural discussions and to understand the current discussion on sustainability in cloud architecture. To identify these discussions, we first put together a list of terms indicating sustainability as the topic. Our initial findings indicate practitioners mainly focus on design aspects (analysis, synthesis, and implementation) while avoiding complex activities like evaluation and maintenance. Technical sustainability is emphasized, while the economic dimension has the most discussions exclusively focused on it. This contrasts with previous academic literature, which highlighted environmental sustainability.
Paper Structure (19 sections, 5 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 19 sections, 5 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Study Design
  3. Research Aims and Questions
  4. Dataset building
  5. Step 1: Repository selection
  6. Query terms identification
  7. Step 2: Query building
  8. Step 3: Data point selection
  9. Data extraction and initial analysis
  10. RQ1
  11. RQ2
  12. Preliminary Results and Findings
  13. RQ1: architectural discussion coverage
  14. RQ2: State of the sustainability discussions
  15. Discussion
  16. ...and 4 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: The process of extracting sustainability-related terms for further query building step. 82 such terms are extracted.
  • Figure 2: The process of extracting and filtering data points from SEDE to analysis. 859 data points are extracted among which 192 data points are accepted.
  • Figure 3: From top-left--Upper plot: architecting phases addressed along the years. Lower plot: Cloud architecture discussions across years. Vertical plot: Architecting phases counts that are addressed in the SE posts discussions
  • Figure 4: Discussed sustainability dimensions along with their intersections.
  • Figure 5: The co-occurrence of sustainability dimensions with architectural phases.