Software visualization: Difference between revisions

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{{confused|Visualization (graphics)}}

'''Software visualization'''<ref>{{cite book |firstfirst1=Johannes |lastlast1=Bohnet |first2=Jürgen |last2=Döllner |chapter=Analyzing Feature Implementation by Visual Exploration of Architecturally-Embedded Call-Graphs |title=4th International Workshop on Dynamic Analysis |publisher=ACM Press |___location= |year=2006 |pages=41–48 |doi=10.1145/1138912.1138922 |isbn=1595934006 |s2cid=17556465 }}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Diehl|2002}}; {{harvnb|Diehl|2007}}; {{harvnb|Knight|2002}}</ref> or '''software visualisation''' refers to the visualization of information of and related to software systems—either the [[software architecture|architecture]] of its [[source code]] or metrics of their [[Run time (program lifecycle phase)|runtime behavior]]- and—and their development process by means of static, interactive or animated 2-D or 3-D<ref>({{harvnb|Marcus|Feng|Maletic|2003}}; {{harvnb|Wettel|Lanza|2007}})</ref> visual representations of their structure,<ref>{{harvnb|Staples|Bieman|1999}}</ref> execution,<ref>{{cite book |firstfirst1=J. |lastlast1=Trümper |first2=J. |last2=Döllner |first3=A. |last3=Telea |chapter=Multiscale Visual Comparison of Execution Traces |doi=10.1109/ICPC.2013.6613833 |title=Proceedings of the International Conference on Program Comprehension |publisher=IEEE Computer Society |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-4673-3092-3 |pages=53–62 |s2cid=206839054 |url=https://pure.rug.nl/ws/files/14423309/2013ProcICPCTrumper.pdf }}</ref> behavior,<ref>({{harvnb|Kuhn|Greevy|2006}}, {{harvnb|Stasko|Brown|Domingue|Price|1998}})</ref> and evolution.

== Software system information ==

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== Objectives ==

The objectives of software visualization are to support the [[program comprehension|understanding of software systems]] (i.e., its structure) and algorithms (e.g., by animating the behavior of sorting algorithms) as well as the analysis and exploration of software systems and their anomalies (e.g., by showing classes with high [[coupling (computer science)|coupling]]) and their development and evolution. One of the strengths of software visualization is to combine and relate information of software systems that are not inherently linked, for example by projecting code changes onto software execution traces.<ref>{{cite book |firstfirst1=J. |lastlast1=Bohnet |first2=S. |last2=Voigt |first3=J. |last3=Döllner |chapter=Projecting code changes onto execution traces to support localization of recently introduced bugs |title=Proceedings of the 2009 ACM symposium on Applied Computing |date=2009 |pages=438–442 |isbn=9781605581668 |doi=10.1145/1529282.1529378 |s2cid=8349297 }}</ref>

Software visualization can be used as tool and technique to explore and analyze software system information, e.g., to discover anomalies similar to the process of [[Data mining|visual data mining]].<ref>({{harvnb|Keim|2002}}; {{harvnb|Soukup|Davidson|2002}}; {{harvnb|Burch|Diehl|Weißgerber|2005}})</ref> For example, software visualization is used to monitoring activities such as for code quality or team activity.<ref>{{cite book |firstfirst1=J. |lastlast1=Bohnet |first2=J. |last2=Döllner |chapter=Monitoring Code Quality and Development Activity by Software Maps |doi=10.1145/1985362.1985365 |title=Proceedings of the IEEE ACM ICSE Workshop on Managing Technical Debt |publisher=Association for Computing Machinery |year=2011 |isbn=9781450305860 |pages=9–16 |chapter-urls2cid=17258620 }}</ref> Visualization is not inherently a method for [[software quality assurance]].{{fact|date=September 2017}}. Software visualization participates to [[Software intelligence|Software Intelligence]] in allowing to discover and take advantage of mastering inner components of software systems.

==Types==

Tools for software visualization might be used to visualize source code and [[software bug|quality defect]]s during software development and maintenance activities. There are different approaches to map source code to a visual representation such as by [[software map]]s<ref>{{cite book |firstfirst1=D. |lastlast1=Limberger |first2=B. |last2=Wasty |first3=J. |last3=Trümper |first4=J. |last4=Döllner |chapter=Interactive software maps for web-based source code analysis |title=Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on 3D Web Technology |date=2013 |pages=91–98 |isbn=9781450321334 |doi=10.1145/2466533.2466550 |s2cid=3040005 }}</ref> Their objective includes, for example, the automatic discovery and visualization of quality defects in object-oriented software systems and services. Commonly, they visualize the direct relationship of a class and its methods with other classes in the software system and mark potential quality defects. A further benefit is the support for visual navigation through the software system.

More or less specialized [[graph drawing software]] is used for software visualization. A small-scale 2003 survey of researchers active in the [[reverse engineering]] and [[software maintenance]] fields found that a wide variety of visualization tools were used, including general purpose graph drawing packages like [[GraphViz]] and [[GraphEd]], UML tools like [[Rational Rose]] and [[Borland Together]], and more specialized tools like [[Visualization of Compiler Graphs]] (VCG) and [[Rigi (software)|Rigi]].<ref>{{cite journal | doi = 10.1002/smr.270 | title=Software visualization in software maintenance, reverse engineering, and re-engineering: a research survey | journal=Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice | date=2003 | volume=15 | issue=2 | pages=87–109 | first=Rainer | last=Koschke| doi-access=free }}</ref>{{rp|99–100}} The range of UML tools that can act as a visualizer by reverse engineering source is by no means short; a 2007 book noted that besides the two aforementioned tools, [[ESS-Model]], [[BlueJ]], and [[Fujaba]] also have this capability, and that Fujaba can also identify [[design pattern]]s.<ref name="Diehl2007">{{harvnb|Diehl|2007|p=63}}</ref>

==See also==

;;Programs:

* [[Imagix 4D]]

* [[NDepend]]

* [[SotoarcSourcetrail]]

* [[Sourcetrail]][https://www.sourcetrail.com]

* [[Softagram]][https://softagram.com]

* [[Getaviz]][https://github.com/softvis-research/Getaviz]

* [[SonarGraph]][https://www.hello2morrow.com/products/sonargraph]

;;Related concepts:

* [[Application discovery and understanding]]

* [[Software maintenance]]

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==Further reading==

*{{cite book |lastlast1=Roels |firstfirst1=R. |last2=Meştereagă |first2=P. |last3=Signer |first3=B. |title=Computer Supported Education |series=Communications in Computer and Information Science |volume=583 |pages=169–188 |chapter=An Interactive Source Code Visualisation Plug-in for the MindXpres Presentation Platform |title=Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) |year=2016 |doi=10.1007/978-3-319-29585-5_10 |isbn=978-3-319-29584-8 |publisher=Springer }}

*{{cite book |lastlast1=Burch |firstfirst1=M. |last2=Diehl |first2=S. |last3=Weißgerber |first3=P. |chapter=Visual data mining in software archives |title=Proceedings of the 2005 ACM symposium on Software visualization (SoftVis '05) |publisher= |___location= |year=2005 |isbn= 1595930736|pages=37–46 |doi=10.1145/1056018.1056024 |refs2cid=harv1577375 }}

*{{cite book |first=S. |last=Diehl |title=Software Visualization. International Seminar Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, May 20–25, 2001 Revised Papers |volume=2269 |publisher=Springer |year=2002 |doi=10.1007/3-540-45875-1 |isbn=978-3-540-43323-1 |ref=harv|series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |s2cid=21007575 }}

*{{cite book |first=S. |last=Diehl |title=Software Visualization — Visualizing the Structure, Behaviour, and Evolution of Software |publisher=Springer |___location= |year=2007 |isbn=978-3-540-46504-1 |ref=harv}}

*{{cite book |lastlast1=Eades |firstfirst1=P. |last2=Zhang |first2=K. |title=Software Visualisation |publisher=World Scientific |series=Series on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering |volume=7 |year=1996 |isbn=981-02-2826-0 }}

*{{cite book |lastlast1=Gîrba |firstfirst1=T. |last2=Kuhn |first2=A. |last3=Seeberger |first3=M. |last4=Ducasse |first4=S. |chapter=How Developers Drive Software Evolution |chapterurlchapter-url=http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Archive/Papers/Girb05cOwnershipMap.pdf |title=Proceedings of International Workshop on Principles of Software Evolution (IWPSE 2005) |publisher=IEEE Computer Society Press |doi=10.1109/IWPSE.2005.21 |year=2005 |isbn=0-7695-2349-8 |pages=113–122 |s2cid=9260583 }}

*{{cite journal |first=D.A. |last=Keim |title=Information visualization and visual data mining |journal=IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=1–8 |date=January–March 2002 |doi=10.1109/2945.981847 |refbibcode=harv2002ITVCG...881847K }}

*{{cite book |last=Knight |first=C. |chapter=System and Software Visualization |editor=Chang Shi-kuo |series=Handbook Of Software Engineering And Knowledge Engineering |volume=2 |title=Emerging Technologies |chapterurlchapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sXfFCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA131 |date=2002 |publisher=World Scientific |isbn=978-981-4491-78-5 |pages=131–148 |ref=harv}}

*{{cite book |lastlast1=Kuhn |firstfirst1=A. |last2=Greevy |first2=O. |chapter=Exploiting the Analogy Between Traces and Signal Processing |title=Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM 2006) |publisher=IEEE Computer Society Press |___location= |year=2006 |pages=394–5 |doi=10.1109/ASE.2004.1342773 |isbn=0-7695-2131-2 |chapter-url=http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~scg/Archive/Papers/Kuhn06cTraceSignalICSM2006.pdf |ref=harv}}

*{{cite book |first=M. |last=Lanza |chapter=CodeCrawler — polymetric views in action |title=Proceedings. 19th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Linz, Austria, 20 24 Sept. 2004 |publisher= |___location= |year=2004 |pages=394–5 |doi=10.1109/ASE.2004.1342773 |isbn=0-7695-2131-2 }}

*{{cite book |lastlast1=Lopez |firstfirst1=F.L. |last2=Robles |first2=G. |last3=Gonzalez |first3=B.J.M. |chapter=Applying social network analysis to the information in CVS repositories |title=International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2004)" W17S Workshop 26th International Conference on Software Engineering, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 25 May 2004 |publisher=IET |___location= |year=2004 |pages=101–5 |doi=10.1049/ic:20040485 |doi-broken-date=12 July 2025 |isbn=0-86341-432-X }}

*{{cite book |firstfirst1=A. |lastlast1=Marcus |first2=L. |last2=Feng |first3=J.I. |last3=Maletic |chapter=3D representations for software visualization |isbn=1581136420 |doi=10.1145/774833.774837 |title=Proceedings of the 2003 ACM symposium on Software visualization |date=2003 |pages=27–ff |refs2cid=harv10263993 }}

*{{cite book |firstfirst1=Tom |lastlast1=Soukup |first2=Ian |last2=Davidson |title=Visual Data Mining: Techniques and Tools for Data Visualization and Mining |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9HsVknVqbo4C |date=2002 |publisher=Wiley |isbn=978-0-471-27138-3 |ref=harv}}

*{{cite journal |lastlast1=Staples |firstfirst1=M.L. |last2=Bieman |first2=J.M. |title=3-D Visualization of Software Structure |journal=Advances in Computers |volume=49 |pages=96–143 |year=1999 |doi=10.1016/S0065-2458(08)60284-3 |isbn=9780120121496 |refciteseerx=harv10.1.1.13.3090 }}

*{{cite book |firstfirst1=John |lastlast1=Stasko |first2=Marc H. |last2=Brown |first3=John B. |last3=Domingue |first4=Blaine A. |last4=Price |title=Software Visualization: Programming as a Multimedia Experience |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=13PaPtQqtHUC&pg=PP1 |year=1998 |publisher=MIT Press |isbn=978-0-262-19395-5 |ref=harv}}

*{{cite book |firstfirst1=F. |lastlast1=Van Rysselberghe |first2=S. |last2=Demeyer |chapter=Studying Software Evolution Information By Visualizing the Change History |title=Proceedings. 20th International Conference On Software Maintenance |publisher=IEEE Computer Society Press |year=2004 |pages=328–337 |isbn=0-7695-2213-0 |doi=10.1109/ICSM.2004.1357818 |s2cid=16571788 }}

*{{cite book |lastlast1=Wettel |firstfirst1=R. |last2=Lanza |first2=M. |chapter=Visualizing Software Systems as Cities |title=Proceedings of VISSOFT 2007 (4th IEEE International Workshop on Visualizing Software For Understanding and Analysis) |publisher=IEEE Computer Society Press |year=2007 |pages=92–99 |isbn=978-1-4244-0599-2 |doi=10.1109/VISSOF.2007.4290706 |refs2cid=harv9974947 }}

*{{cite book |first=K. |last=Zhang |title=Software Visualization — From Theory to Practice |publisher=Kluwer |year=2003 |isbn=1-4020-7448-4 }}

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* [http://code.google.com/p/epdv/ EPDV] Eclipse Project Dependencies Viewer

{{Visualization}}

[[Category:Software engineering]]

[[Category:Infographics]]

[[Category:Software maintenance]]