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Software Engineering in Practice Track Paper
CORA: Config Risk Analyzer - Predicting Risk of Configuration Changes at Scale

Authors: Weiyan Sun, Audris Mockus, Brian Ellis, Jun Ge, Madigan Kim, Sahil Kumar, Gursharan Singh, Matt Steiner, Siri Uppalapati, and Nachiappan Nagappan

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 394, 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)


Abstract
Configuration changes - modifications to feature flags and service parameters - are important to operating services, but they can cause severe outages (SEVs) with substantial service disruption. While code diff risk prediction is well studied, configuration diff risk has received little attention. The code-oriented Diff Risk Score (DRS) model provides limited discriminatory power for config diffs because config risk stems not from code complexity but from the importance, blast radius, and operational readiness of the affected services. We describe the development of CORA (COnfig Risk Analyzer), a dedicated risk model for config diffs. A key insight is that the config-path-to-service mapping bridges from what changed to which services are affected, enabling risk assessment in terms of service criticality rather than code properties. CORA evolved through three iterations. A logistic regression model with config-specific features achieved an 11% improvement in recall at 5% gating over the DRS model on config diffs. Used for a freeze period, it reduced config gating while outage impact decreased and config diff landing volume increased 91.4%. A unified LightGBM model trained on Meta-wide data achieved a 25.95% improvement in recall at 10% gating, with organization-level improvements ranging from 15% to 66%. An enhanced model with enriched service features and SEV-severity-aware training (having also explored Bayesian hyperparameter optimization) achieved a 22% improvement in recall at 15% gating, intercepting meaningful additional high-severity outage impact in backtesting. To our knowledge, CORA is the first system to apply predictive risk modeling specifically to configuration changes.

Cite as

Weiyan Sun, Audris Mockus, Brian Ellis, Jun Ge, Madigan Kim, Sahil Kumar, Gursharan Singh, Matt Steiner, Siri Uppalapati, and Nachiappan Nagappan. CORA: Config Risk Analyzer - Predicting Risk of Configuration Changes at Scale. In 20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 394, pp. 86:1-86:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)


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@InProceedings{sun_et_al:LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.86,
  author =	{Sun, Weiyan and Mockus, Audris and Ellis, Brian and Ge, Jun and Kim, Madigan and Kumar, Sahil and Singh, Gursharan and Steiner, Matt and Uppalapati, Siri and Nagappan, Nachiappan},
  title =	{{CORA: Config Risk Analyzer - Predicting Risk of Configuration Changes at Scale}},
  booktitle =	{20th International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement (ESEM 2026)},
  pages =	{86:1--86:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-450-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{394},
  editor =	{Feldt, Robert and Paasivaara, Maria and Mendez, Daniel and Wagner, Stefan and Bar\'{o}n, Marvin Mu\~{n}oz},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.86},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-280542},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ESEM.2026.86},
  annote =	{Keywords: Configuration changes, risk prediction, defect prediction, code freeze, software supply chain, gradient boosting, service reliability}
}

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