Analyzing duplication on code generated by Scaffolding frameworks for Graphical user interfaces

Abstract

Scaffolding is an approach used by some modern web frameworks in order to generate an initial version of applications code based on domain model meta data. Since this temporary code should be customized by programmers to implement real systems, its quality metrics are important aspects. In this paper, a methodology is proposed and applied in order to relate domain model size and a quality metric -amount of duplicated code -focusing on Graphical user interface implementation. Results show that code duplication grows at least linearly with the growth of the number of entities in domain model. There are also some scenarios where quadratic proportions were found. These observations suggest that, for large domain models, code quality and its evolution would be affected when scaffolding frameworks are used.