Maintainability prediction of relational database-driven applications: A systematic review

Background: Maintainability is an important quality attribute. Its prediction for relational database-driven applications can help organizations improve the maintainability of these applications. Aims: The aim of this paper is to present the results of a Systematic Literature Review - also known as Systematic Review (SR) - with an up-to-date account of the state of art on maintainability prediction and measures for relational database-driven applications, to compare these results with those from a previously conducted SR [19], and to provide a baseline for conducting further research in this area. Method: A SR on maintainability prediction for relational databasedriven applications was carried out using Kitchenham's guidelines for conducting SRs in Software Engineering. Results: The results show little evidence on maintainability prediction for relational database-driven applications with expert judgment as the most common prediction technique, coupling related measures as the most common predictors, and subjective assessment as most common maintainability measure. Conclusions: The presented results suggest a strong need for further investigating the area of maintainability prediction for relational database-driven applications.