Comparing The Accumulation Of Technical Debt Between Two Applications Developed With Spring Web MVC And Apache Struts 2

This paper presents the results of an observational study that investigates the di↵erences between two widely used software development frameworks for Java EE applications. Also, it presents the accumulation of Technical Debt and the evolution of code quality metrics of software developed using these frameworks. Considering that web applications hold the lion’s share of today’s IT industry, this study focuses on two widely popular Java EE frameworks, namely Spring Web MVC Framework and Apache Struts 2. In particular, we have developed one system over four versions in both frameworks while monitoring Technical Debt and code quality metrics. The findings indicate that software developed based on these frameworks is relatively free of Technical Debt. Moreover, we have not noticed any significant di↵erences between the two frameworks in terms of Technical Debt, from the perspective of source code metrics. Finally, conducting this study, we realized that if the framework is properly used it can potentiality lead to high quality and maintainable systems.