Multi-tier web applications face significant implementation challenges in DevSecOps, including tool integration complexity, automation gaps, and cultural resistance. This study presents a proxy-based DevSecOps framework grounded in a formal architectural decomposition that transforms classical O(n × m) pipeline integration complexity into additive O(n1 × m1) + O(n2 × m2) components through the separation of static and dynamic execution contexts. The framework is instantiated for PHP-based multi-tier web applications deployed on AWS infrastructure using Terraform-managed Infrastructure as Code principles; all ecosystem coherence metrics, toolset analysis, and complexity computations are derived within this specific technology context, and generalization to other language ecosystems or cloud platforms constitutes a boundary condition discussed in Section V. Theoretical contributions include: 1) a formal proxy pipeline architecture with mathematical complexity analysis demonstrating that complexity reduction is guaranteed when tool ecosystem coherence exceeds 70%; 2) systematic tool integration using PHP-specific tooling, yielding a theoretical ecosystem coherence of 76.9%; and 3) theoretical validation addressing 18 out of 20 identified DevSecOps implementation challenges. Mathematical analysis theoretically predicts a 48.13%reduction in tool integration conflicts and a 61.9% toolset reduction relative to traditional monolithic pipelines through context separation. All quantitative figures presented above are theoretically derived predictions, not empirically measured outcomes. They are formalized as falsifiable hypotheses H1 through H5 in Section V, with empirical validation identified as the primary direction for future work.
Rida et al. (Thu,) studied this question.