Technical Debt in Data-Intensive Software Systems
This is an incremental position paper that addresses technical debt issues for developers of data-intensive software systems.
The paper tackles the problem of technical debt in data-intensive software systems by proposing a conceptual model that identifies where technical debt can emerge, and illustrates its proliferation through examples of database schema smells.
The ever-increasing amount, variety as well as generation and processing speed of today's data pose a variety of new challenges for developing Data-Intensive Software Systems (DISS). As with developing other kinds of software systems, developing DISS is often done under severe pressure and strict schedules. Thus, developers of DISS often have to make technical compromises to meet business concerns. This position paper proposes a conceptual model that outlines where Technical Debt (TD) can emerge and proliferate within such data-centric systems by separating a DISS into three parts (Software Systems, Data Storage Systems and Data). Further, the paper illustrates the proliferation of Database Schema Smells as TD items within a relational database-centric software system based on two examples.