一句话:探索用自然语言处理、大语言模型与数据挖掘自动增强和验证 API,以降低缺陷并减少文档负担。
现代 Web 应用日益依赖 API,API 缺陷会带来安全、可用性与可维护性风险。API 文档对理解 API 至关重要,许多测试技术也依赖形式化文档,但编写文档耗时且易错,常被开发者忽视。近期大语言模型展现出强大的自动化能力,数据挖掘则可用于整合散落于网络中的 API 信息。该博士项目旨在探索利用自然语言处理相关技术与数据挖掘来增强和验证 API,并提出四个研究问题:哪些类型的 API 能受益于此类辅助;可用这些方法解决哪些 API 问题;这些方法(如 LLM)辅助 API 的有效性如何;以及其在时间与成本上的效率如何。摘要未报告具体实验结果。
APIs are increasingly prominent for modern web applications, allowing millions of users around the world to access data. Reducing the risk of API defects - and consequently failures - is key, notably for security, availability, and maintainability purposes. Documenting an API is crucial, allowing the user to better understand it. Moreover, API testing techniques often require formal documentation as input. However, documenting is a time-consuming and error-prone task, often overlooked by developers. Natural Language Processing (NLP) could assist API development, as recent Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrated exceptional abilities to automate tasks based on their colossal training data. Data mining could also be utilized, synthesizing API information scattered across the web. Hence, I present my PhD project aimed at exploring the usage of NLP-related technologies and data mining to augment and validate APIs. The research questions of this PhD project are: (1) What types of APIs can benefit from NLP and data mining assistance? (2) What API problems can be solved with such methods? (3) How effective are the methods (i.e. LLMs) in assisting APIs? (4) How efficient are the methods in assisting APIs (i.e. time and costs)?