Entity boundary and control roles show consistent proportions in Java files
The EBC Proportionality Law: A Recurring Architectural-Role Pattern Across Java Software
Software Engineering
Summary
Software is often divided into parts with different jobs, like holding data, interacting with users, and coordinating actions. The authors looked at over 1.5 million Java files to see how these roles, called Entity, Boundary, and Control, appear together. They found that files with Boundary and Control roles are more common than those with Entity roles, with a typical mix across many projects. However, the method to assign these roles automatically doesn't always agree with human experts, so the results show general patterns, not exact truths.
What this means in practice
- •For software architects: Use typical proportions of Entity, Boundary, and Control roles in Java files as empirical guidance when designing or evaluating software architecture.
- •For software quality teams: Detect unusual distributions of architectural roles in large Java projects to help identify design inconsistencies or areas needing review.
Authors
Dzikri Rahadian Fudholi, Andrea Capiluppi
Abstract
Architectural roles describe how responsibilities are distributed within software systems. Entity--Boundary--Control (EBC) separates domain information, external interaction, and workflow coordination, but its proportions across diverse software remain unclear. This study examines file-level classifier-derived EBC proportionality in 1,556,985 Java files from 732 project instances and 78 functional categories. A classifier trained on labels generated by a large language model assigned one representative role per file. The labels were aggregated at project and functional-category levels and analysed using descriptive statistics and density-based clustering. The results show that Entity was less common than Boundary and Control. The dominant cluster covered 48 categories, 472 project instances, and 47.75% of classified files; its mean composition was 13.25% Entity, 42.65% Boundary, and 44.10% Control. The remaining 30 categories form one alternative and 11 smaller specialised patterns. Some selected variations were consistent with category responsibilities, while others received mixed support. Agreement with independent expert labels was limited (31.37% accuracy; macro-F1 0.31; Entity recall 13%). All reported proportions and clusters are therefore patterns in classifier-assigned roles, not verified architectural ground truth. Within this measurement boundary, the study provides a large-scale empirical reference of EBC distributions at the file level, and it documents the limitations of the automated approach.