ICWE 2023 - REPLICATION PACKAGE

An empirical study of Web API versioning practices

This package contains three raw data sources of the results thoroughly analyzed and discussed in the empirical study:

• all-version.json: A JSON file that contains the list of the 5514 distinct version identifiers extracted from the info.version field. This list was used as an input to locate version identifiers in URLs (Paths, and Sever).
• regex-detector.json: A JSON file that contains the set regular expression based detectors employed to classify the formats of the version identifiers extracted from each for info.version field, the Paths URLs, and Server URLS.
• versions_formats.json.zip: A compressed JSON file that contains the raw data of the classification results of the versions detected in each API commit. api_spec_id is an identifier of distinct APIs, and id is the commit unique identifiers. The other fields are self-explanatory.

Detailed formats classification results

Number of commits with version identifiers of API releases classified by their formats. * stands for an integer and # stands for an arbitrary combination of characters:

Format	info.version	path	server	All
Major version number	29129	45310	14944	89383
integer	3738	592	144	4474
v*	25391	44718	14800	84909
SemVer	114663	788	18172	133623
#semver-2	166	0	4249	4415
#semver-3	111	0	2686	2797
#semver-6	6	0	0	6
semver-2	23248	772	1594	25614
semver-2#	212	0	4260	4472
semver-3	88964	22	2686	91672
semver-3#	1448	0	2697	4145
semver-4	513	3	3	519
semver-5	1	3	3	7
semver-6	20	3	3	26
semver-6#	2	0	0	2
Tag	845	1199	6	2050
latest*	819	1174	3	1996
stable*	26	25	3	54
Date	5447	299	27	5773
date(Month yy)	0	3	3	6
date(Month yyyy)	22	0	0	22
date(yyyy)	21	3	3	27
date(yyyy-mm)	43	33	3	79
date(yyyy-mm-dd)	5146	245	3	5394
date(yyyy.m)	10	0	0	10
date(yyyy.mm)	4	3	3	10
date(yyyy.mm.dd)	134	3	3	140
date(yyyy/mm)	20	3	3	26
date(yyyy/mm/dd)	20	3	3	26
date(yyyymmdd)	27	3	3	33
Other	1549	1354	0	2309

Number of commits with version identifiers of API preview releases classified by their formats. * stands for an integer:

Format	info.version	path	server	All
Develop	545	92	106	743
dev*	185	91	104	380
develop*	12	0	2	14
semver-dev*	335	0	0	335
semver-dev*.*	12	0	0	12
v*dev*	1	1	0	2
Snapshot	964	0	11	975
SNAPSHOT*	34	0	0	34
semver-SNAPSHOT*	930	0	11	941
Preview	863	0	0	863
date-preview*	830	0	0	830
semver-pre*.*	10	0	0	10
semver-preview*	23	0	0	23
Alpha	3003	2339	10	5352
alpha*	65	25	10	100
semver-alpha*	510	0	0	510
semver-alpha*.*	385	0	0	385
v*alpha*	1975	2314	0	4289
v*alpha*.*	68	0	0	68
Beta	19410	15459	207	35076
*beta*	105	0	0	105
beta*	339	37	175	551
semver (beta*)	368	0	0	368
semver beta*	557	0	0	557
semver.beta*.date	9	0	0	9
v*.beta	254	44	0	298
v*beta*	15720	15378	32	31130
v*beta*.*	638	0	0	638
v*p*beta*	1420	0	0	1420
Release Candidate	548	0	0	548
rc*	26	0	0	26
semver-rc*	118	0	0	118
semver-rc*.*	355	0	0	355
semver.rc*.date	49	0	0	49