On cloud computing infrastructure for existing code-clone detection algorithms

Abstract

Microservice Architecture (MSA) is becoming a design standard for modern cloud-based software systems. However, even though cloud-based applications have been thoroughly explored with regards to networking, scalability, and decomposition of existing monolithic applications into MSA based applications, not much research has been done showing the viability of MSA in new problem domains. In this paper, we explore the application of MSA to the code-clone detection problem domain to identify any improvements that can be made over existing local code-clone detection applications. A fragment of source code that is identical or similar to another is a code-clone. Code-clones make it difficult to maintain applications as they create multiple points within the code that bugs must be fixed, new rules enforced, or design decisions imposed. As applications grow larger and larger, the pervasiveness of code-clones likewise grows. To face the code-clone related issues, many tools and algorithms have been proposed to find and document code-clones within an application. In this paper, we show that many improvements can be made by utilizing emerging cloud-based technologies.