The Use of Information Visualization to Support Software Configuration Management

Abstract

Abstract. This paper addresses the visualization of the collaboration history in the development of software items using a simple interactive representation called Revision Tree. The visualization presents detailed information on a single software item with the intention of supporting the awareness of the project managers and developers about the item evolution and the collaboration taking place on its development. We considered that repositories of Software Configuration Management tools are the best information source to extract relevant information dealing with the relationships between the programmers and software items, as well as information regarding the creation of baselines, branches and revisions, and useful date and time details for the arrangement of the development timeline and collaboration representation.

An Iconography-Based Modeling Approach for the Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Architectural Heritage

“…The historical state is so detailed that the public is led to believe that the site was very similar to the restituted one. In other works, hypothetical parts and historical states are displayed by color coding [3], by transparency [4], wireframe or broken lines [1], as the goal is to distinguish the certainty levels. However, uncertainty interpretation is limited to the 3D scene: parts are shown with different transparency levels but data cannot be fully manipulated and information cannot be fully extracted [5].…”

An Image-Based Approach for the Architectural Modeling of Past States

“…Also procedural methods allow past states to be reconstructed by means of generative mesh modelling that produces complex manifold surfaces from simpler ones (Haegler et al 2009;Maïm et al 2007). Finally, some approaches use CAAD methods to reconstruct past states by deduction and tend to distinguish hypothetical parts and historical states displaying them by color coding (Theron et al 2007), by transparency (Kensek et al 2004), wireframe or broken lines (Strothotte et al 1999). …”

Supporting the understanding of the evolution of software items

“…Our design has been strongly influenced by [Lanza 2001] which proposal deals with the visualization of software attributes using an Finally, this proposal is based in the Revision Tree, which is a representation for the evolution of software items [Theron et al 2007]. However, we have added a tool for extracting and representing open source software repositories details, and we have included new interaction techniques to make the visualization more usable and intuitive, such as the hiding of rows and columns, the exchanging of rows, filtering of dates, zoom support and the displaying of details about the software item.…”