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Server-side web applications are vulnerable to request races. While some previous studies of real-world request races exist, they primarily focus on the root cause of these bugs. To better combat request races in server-side web applications, we need a deep understanding of their characteristics. In this paper, we provide a complementary focus on race effects and fixes with an enlarged set of request races from web applications developed with Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks. We revisit characterization questions used in previous studies on newly included request races, distinguish the external and internal effects of request races, and relate requestrace fixes with concurrency control mechanisms in languages and frameworks for developing server-side web applications. Our study reveals that: (1) request races from ORM-based web applications share the same characteristics as those from raw-SQL web applications; (2) request races violating application semantics without explicit crashes and error messages externally are common, and latent request races, which only corrupt some shared resource internally but require extra requests to expose the misbehavior, are also common; and (3) various fix strategies other than using synchronization mechanisms are used to fix request races. We expect that our results can help developers better understand request races and guide the design and development of tools for combating request races.
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PowerStation: Automatically detecting and fixing inefficiencies of database-backed web applications in IDE∗
Modern web applications have stringent latency requirements while processing an ever-increasing amount of user data. To address these challenges and improve programmer productivity, Object Relational Mapping (ORM) frameworks have been developed to allow developers writing database processing code in an object-oriented manner. Despite such frameworks, prior work found that developers still struggle in developing performant ORM-based web applications. This paper presents PowerStation, a RubyMine IDE plugin for optimizing web applications developed using the Ruby on Rails ORM. Using automated static analysis, PowerStation detects ORMrelated inefficiency problems and suggests fixes to developers. Our evaluation on 12 real-world applications shows that PowerStation can automatically detects 1221 performance issues across all of them. We have uploaded a tutorial on using PowerStation plugin to https://youtu.be/v_uY5bjGuK0.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1546083
- PAR ID:
- 10067548
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 26th ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering (ESEC/FSE)
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
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- The DOI is not currently available.
